One Sunday I saw some [Fascist] soldiers enter an Ethiopian church and ring the bells. Sixteen old men thought it was time for prayer, but before they could enter the church the [Fascists] killed them. I heard the words of these poor men: ‘Egziabher Yasywo’ (May God open your eyes to the truth!) I could not help crying, but the [Fascists] were laughing. The dead bodies lay for two days on the steps of the church.
Men whom Boaglio had considered fair and honest […] were ‘grinning coldly’ as they calmly shot the people running out screaming from their burning homes.⁴⁷
Accounts by witnesses in the Feransay Legassion district mention the use of hand grenades. This was confirmed by the French consul-general, who wrote that the killing turned into a pogrom: ‘They were killing for the fun of killing; they pillaged for the joy of destroying and getting drunk; they then set fire, through an imperious need to complete the devastation […] The tukuls, roofed with thatch and serving as houses for the natives, were burned; sometimes with their occupants inside, due to the impossibility of escaping before the forces liberally unleashed. Flame-throwers and grenades served to exacerbate the evils.’⁴⁸
[…]
Liqe Tebebt was shot and also fell, seriously injured, into the water. In his state of shock he saw that the major was trampling on the dead and the dying on the riverbank, and laughing at one of his victims who was in agony and begging to be given the coup de grâce.
[…]
‘After the three days of rampaging in the town, Fascist beasts who had returned from Holetta [military academy] with a truck tied the legs of Ato Ar’aya to the back of the truck. Before the vehicle moved, Ar’aya sang a mission song:
Heaven is opening for me to enter
– I will see Jesus there.
I am happy! I am happy!
– I am happy!’
Unmoved, the laughing Blackshirts told him that it would be better for him to listen to their song instead, and chanted their ‘war cry’: ‘Du-ce! Du-ce!’
(Source.)
(Source.)