Wukro

Wukro has been inhabited for millennia.[3] Archaeological digs have found inscriptions from between the sixth and eighth century B.C.[4] The place is part of the ancient trade route (particularly for salt) linking the Red Sea with inner Ethiopia, all the way to Lasta.[3] It is said to be the location of the tomb of seventh-century Ethiopian king who hosted Muhammed and his followers.[3] It has many rock hewn churches.[5] The place is named in many old Ge'ez sources, including those about the thirteenth-century Ethiopian king Lalibela, the sixteenth-century king Zär'a Ya'eqob, and the seventeenth-century king Susenyos.[3]

Francisco Álvares was the first European recorded to have visited Wukro, when in 1521 he stayed at the royal inn or Betenegush. His account also includes a description of Maryam Wukro church "made in a rock, hewn and wrought with the pickaxe, with three aisles and their supports made of the rock itself."[6]

The next important European visit was in 1868 when Lieutenant-General Sir Robert Napier passed through the village on his way to Magdela where he defeated the Ethiopian Emperor Tewodros II.[7] During their march through Wukro, members of the British army saw one of the Tigrayan rock-hewn churches, most likely Wukro Chirkos, and were afterwards thought to be the first Europeans to see these unusual structures;[8] another notable landmark is the more recent church Wukro Giyorgis Bete.

During the Italian occupation, in 1938, there were shops and a hotel-restaurant, a car service station, a telephone and telegraph office and a health post. It was qualified as an “Italian town under development”.[9] Many of these buildings are still present, just south of the bridge. Francesco Baldassare started a mill in Wukro, but abandoned it when the Italians were defeated in 1941.[10] Wukro was used as his headquarters by Blatta Haile Mariam Redda during the Woyane rebellion, until Ras Abebe Aregai captured the town 17 October 1943.[11] Dawit W. Girgis reports in his memoirs that in 1964, with the permission of Emperor Haile Selassie, the Israelis operated a secret base outside Wukro where members of the Anyanya (a Sudanese rebel group) were trained in guerrilla warfare.[10]

During the Ethiopian Civil War, Wukro was repeatedly attacked by Derg aircraft in 1988, resulting in the deaths of a total of 175 residents:[12]

• On 8 April 1988: about 100 killed
• On 13 April 1988: 31 killed
• On 29-30 April 1988: 25 killed
• On 3 May 1988: 20 killed

Wukro was damaged heavily during the Tigray War. It was bombed in mid-November 2020, then shelled by artillery fire a few weeks later, resulting in heavy destruction of property and multiple civilian deaths. There was looting of public and private property leaving shops empty and the hospital 75% destroyed. Occupying soldiers engaged in sexual violence, extrajudicial killings, and detention of civilians through at least March 2021.[13][14]