2021 executive video shot in Tigray area in Ethiopia, not in Amhara

Armed conflict between army and paramilitary groups in northern Ethiopia Many difficulties have been created for civilians, including closed schools and hospitals. A recent video posted on Facebook says soldiers in the area were executed by soldiers. But it is a misleading: Independent investigations have shown that the footage shows the alleged external restraining killing of civilians by the Tigrey area military in 2021.

The 19-second clip posted on Facebook on May 15, 2025 was accompanied by text in Amharic, which read: “Don’t ask me why I have to support Fano. Don’t ask me why I hate prosperity parties and soldiers in military uniforms.”

The Prosperity Party manages Ethiopia.

Screenshot of the misleading post, taken on May 19, 2025.

The video has been shared over 470 times and also contains a text overlay in Amharic, which translates to: “Amharas is being slaughtered. Please share this video with everyone.”

Painful video shows people in military uniforms rounding up and shooting a group of people in dry, hilly areas in civilian clothes.

Similar posts were shared on Facebook.

Amharah Conflict

After the Ethiopian federal government decided to disarm all local paramilitary groups in April 2023, the Vanno militia, who was a former ally during the Tigray War, opposes the state and starts a new conflict in the Amhara region (archived here).

AFP reported in March 2025 that the battle caused a humanitarian crisis: millions of children have graduated and many hospitals are no longer operating (archived here).

Federal forces said in the same month that they killed nearly 300 fans of fighters, and reports showed that the government had lost control of many rural areas in the region.

Last year, Amnesty International reported that Ethiopian troops carried out civilian enforcement laws in Amhara (here).

However, the videos circulating on Facebook have nothing to do with the current events in the area.

Mahbere Dego Massacre

AFP fact-check uses video verification tool Invid-weverify to perform keyframes from video for reverse image search.

The results show that the longer version of the clip is more than 90 seconds long and was released on the Gore website on June 17, 2021.

The English subtitles read: “Ethiopia: Soldiers who execute civilians (longer version)” and added: “This happened in Tigri, Ethiopia, and people said they were living in genocide”.

A week later, Bellingcat, an independent group known for its digital investigation reports on armed conflict, published a report on this particular video that had been circulating on social media at the time and concluded that similar to other videos, it was similar to other videos, and it was verified on January 202 at Mahbere Dego in the Tigrail area, here Mahbere Dego in the Tigrail area, here Mahbere Dego in the Tigrail area, here Mahbere Dego in the Tigrail area, here Mahbere Dego in the Tigrail area, here Mahbere Dego in the Tigrail area, during this period, at Tigrail digrail exterience of Digraime.

Bellingcat’s report includes screenshots from the video, which we matched in a Facebook post, incorrectly claiming that the described event was recently taken in Amhara.

A few days after Bellingcat’s discovery, CNN also aired a portion of the video. “New video of the Ethiopian Holocaust shows soldiers recorded executions,” CNN subtitles read.

A few months ago, in April 2021, Belligcat made an in-depth report on the Mahbere Dego massacre based on similar videos taken at the same location and simultaneously (archived here).

BBC Africa’s Eye also published a similar investigation report, which was the same month (archived here).

Tigray’s war puts the Ethiopian army on par with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which accounted for more than 600,000 lives before a peace agreement was signed in Pretoria, South Africa in November 2022 (archived here).

Both sides were accused of atrocities (here and here) against civilians (here and here archives).