Roads and fields leading to Chenna, a village in the mountains of northern Ethiopia, is filled with bodies of rebel fighters, who were killed in one of the most gruesome reported incidents in the country’s 10-month-old war, reports AFP.

The government, last week, accused Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) of killing as many as 200 civilians in Chenna, including women and children. Medics put the death toll at 125 but told AFP it could climb.

Rejecting the allegations, the TPLF accused Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed of sending “priests, women and children” into battle as cannon fodder.

Ethiopia’s war in the north: Who is fighting in Tigray?

Located in Ethiopia’s Amhara region, Chenna lies south of Tigray and the fighting here broke out last November between pro-government forces and the TPLF.

Hundreds of people have been displaced and killed in last few months due to the fighting that has spread in the neighbouring regions of Amhara and Afar. But, the PM is vowing a swift victory.

Chenna witnessed violence in early September, and the village – a rambling collection of mud homes – is now mostly empty as residents fled away by the stench of death.

“We haven’t buried all the people. We have been burying our people who have been massacred. We were doing that for four days straight,” Amhara militia fighter Yalew Kasse told AFP on Tuesday.

The villagers dug mass graves outside village’s Orthodox Christian church, and militia fighters told AFP that graves of still more civilians could be found elsewhere, sometimes right outside their homes.

“They annihilated one whole family: a mother, a father, a four-year-old boy and a six-year-old girl,” Yalew said.

Spokesman for a local militia Mebratu Adane said most of the bodies that have not been buried were those of TPLF rebels.

AFP has not been able to independently confirm the number of victims or verify whether any of the civilians reportedly killed in Chenna might have been combatants.

The United Nations has expressed concern about the fighting in Amhara, which has killed many thousands of people and pushed hundreds of thousands into famine-like conditions.

UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet warned Monday that the widening war “risks spilling over to the whole Horn of Africa”.

Outside efforts to broker talks have made no visible headway, meaning more intense fighting is likely in the offing.