A day after the joyous celebration of a religious festival, mass funerals were held in the small Ethiopian town of Arerti for the 36 people killed when scaffolding inside an Orthodox Christian church collapsed. Hundreds of mourners walked with coffins draped in colourful cloth into the compound of a nearby church while clerics conducted burial rituals following the disaster at the St Mariam Church. Among them was 22-year-old Fikre Tilahun, who told the BBC that he had lost his mother in the tragedy. Eyewitness Gebreweld Tesfaye told the BBC that a sizeable number of the worshippers decided to climb onto the makeshift scaffolding to view a newly painted mural on the church ceiling when disaster struck. Amensisa Ifa / BBC A mass funeral was held for the victims