Michael Teferi BBC AfricaTuesday August 4, 2026
At least 14 people died when a rain-soaked hillside collapsed onto a mountain monastery in Ethiopia’s northern Amhara region, where worshippers had gathered overnight for prayers.
Eleven of the victims have been buried at the monastery, while the remaining bodies were taken to their hometowns for burial.
Authorities have stopped searching for people who may still be trapped beneath the debris after the slope above the Orthodox Church monastery gave way in the early hours of Monday.
The monastery includes a prayer chamber carved into the mountainside, where the worshippers had gathered for the special prayer service.
“The land above the cave… slid after the heavy rain that lasted throughout the night,” Dagnachew Azbite, a senior local official, told the BBC.
Seven people were rescued with injuries, including five who were seriously hurt, he said.
The gathering at Tsadqane Debre Mitmaq St Mary Monastery featured a holy water cleansing ritual, a practice popular among Orthodox Christians seeking spiritual healing for chronic illnesses.
“Many of those who died had gathered to receive the holy water,” Megabe Hadis Neka Tibeb Ababu, the diocese’s general manager, told the Associated Press news agency.
According to Megabe, 11 of the dead were laid to rest at the monastery. The other victims were transported to their hometowns for burial.
He said authorities were still struggling to identify some of those killed.
Local authorities said emergency teams, security personnel, healthcare workers and residents from nearby communities joined the search and rescue operation.
Archbishop Abune Klementos, head of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church’s North Shewa Diocese, went to the monastery to conduct funeral prayers, pray for those injured and console the victims’ families, authorities added.
Ethiopia faces a heightened risk of landslides during its main rainy season, which generally lasts from June to August.
In March, heavy rains triggered floods and landslides in the southern Gamo Zone, killing more than 100 people.
More than 229 people, including rescuers, died in a landslide in the neighbouring Geze Gofa Zone in July 2024. It was among Ethiopia’s deadliest weather-related disasters in recent years.
Research conducted over the past two decades has recorded increases in both extreme wet spells and extended dry periods across East Africa.
Scientists have repeatedly warned that human-driven climate change is making extreme weather, including intense and prolonged rainfall, more frequent and more severe.
