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A day following joyous religious festivities, collective funerals took place in the small East African town of Arerti for the thirty-six individuals fatally injured when scaffolding within an religious place of worship collapsed.

Numerous grieving individuals walked with coffins covered in colorful fabric into the grounds of a nearby church while religious leaders conducted burial rituals in the wake of the disaster at St Mariam Church.

Among them was 22-year-old a local resident, who explained that he had been bereaved of his parent in the disaster.

"It's challenging to be separated from your mother, extremely hard," he said.

Although the church is currently being built, people had gathered in the structure on midweek during the yearly Orthodox Christian observance of the religious figure.

Eyewitness Account of Incident

Eyewitness Gebreweld Tesfaye described that a considerable group of worshippers decided to climb onto the makeshift scaffolding to view a newly painted mural on the ceiling of the building when tragedy struck.

"The access point was entirely wooden, and there were many people climbing upward at the moment. While the worshippers were going, the wooden structure gave way, leading to the collapse," the witness stated.

Other observers said that chaos followed, as people dispersed in panic or tried to rescue the people of those trapped beneath the debris.

Individual Loss

The young man stated that as soon as he learned of the incident, he hurried to the site, and then to a medical facility to look for his mother, but she was not at either location.

"My cousin called me after that. And then I proceeded to the medical center. She was present," he said.

She was among the thirty-six deceased, with rescue personnel saying that the fatalities could rise as some of the injured, numbering about two hundred, were in serious state. Some of them have been moved to the capital, about 70 km away, for medical care.

Leadership Reaction

The archbishop of the regional religious district, the senior cleric, characterized the tragedy as "extremely devastating and heart-breaking".

The bereaved son stated existence would not be the identical for him and his younger brother without their mother.

"Our mother raised us by making and selling tella," he told.

The authorities offered its sympathies to the relatives of the victims, and said that "security must be given priority" during all construction projects.

Health and safety regulations are inadequately implemented in the country and building disasters are common.