Footage of Eid prayers misrepresented as attack on Muslims in Ethiopia’s Tigray region
- Published on June 5, 2026 at 18:46
- 3 min read
- By Tolera FIKRU GEMTA, AFP Ethiopia
Muslim communities in Ethiopia's Tigray region have long harboured grievances over religious rights. A Facebook post claims to show a video of Muslims being attacked and killed at a stadium in Tigray's Axum city. However, this is false; the clip shows Muslims gathering peacefully for Eid al-Adha prayers late last month in Harar, a city in the country's east. The original video was edited to include a voiceover expressing grief for the purported victims.
The Facebook post shared on May 28, 2026, includes a text overlay in Afaan Oromo reading: “In the Tigray region, Muslims were killed while performing Eid prayers yesterday.”
Shared more than 2,100 times, the post features a split-screen video in which the top half shows a large crowd exiting what appears to be a stadium, with a security officer monitoring from an elevated position above the entrance, while the bottom half displays a static image of a man crying.
The voice-over in Afaan Oromoo claims that “in Axum, in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, security forces and a youth group attacked Muslims while they were performing prayers at a mosque”.
The post attracted more than 1,200 comments, most of them sad-face emojis.
Religious grievances
The claim appears to exploit long-standing tensions in the ancient city of Axum, where restrictions on mosque construction by Orthodox Christians, loudspeaker use for prayers, and burial rights have created deep grievances among the local Muslim community (archived here).
These issues have been exacerbated by local school bans on the hijab in the city. While Ethiopia's education policy generally permits Muslim female students to wear hijabs in accordance with their religious beliefs, some schools in Axum have prohibited the practice, arguing that "schools are not religious spaces" (archived here and here).
In January 2025, thousands of Muslims gathered in Tigray’s capital Mekelle, to protest what they described as the failure of schools in Axum to uphold female students' right to wear hijabs in class, despite court rulings and directives from regional education authorities affirming that right (archived here).
However, the Facebook clip does not show Muslims being attacked in Axum during Eid celebrations.
Eid prayers
An examination of the footage shows a crowd squeezing through a small gate, but no evidence of anyone being attacked.
AFP Fact Check conducted reverse image searches on keyframes from the video and found the same footage posted on TikTok on May 27, 2026, the day Eid al-Adha was celebrated in Ethiopia (archived here). The clip carries no caption and gives no indication of where it was filmed or what it shows.
However, the footage was shared on Facebook on the same day with a caption in Afaan Oromo stating: “This is the Eid prayer held at Imam Ahmed Stadium in Harar city” (archived here).
Harar is in the eastern Harari region, while Tigray is in the country’s north.
AFP Fact Check searched for the Imam Ahmed Stadium in Harar on Google Maps and matched photographs from the site to landmarks visible in the footage, including a distinctive structure identified as the Adem Sheikh building, located directly outside the stadium’s northern exit, opposite the ground’s main grandstand.
The original video was also edited to include an image of Rayya Abba Macca, a prominent Muslim cleric with more than 1.6 million followers on Facebook, and audio seemingly expressing grief for the alleged victims.
AFP Fact Check did not find any credible reports of Muslims coming under attack in either the Tigray or Harari regions during Eid.
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