ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia

The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) on Tuesday said Tigrayan youth, supported by local security forces, had massacred at least 600 civilians in a rural town in the country's north.

The governmental commission noted that a team of investigators had verified the gruesome attack against civilians profiled as ethnic Amharas and Wolkaits in the town of Maikadra in the Western Zone of Ethiopia's northern Tigray region.

"They killed hundreds of people, beating them with batons/sticks, stabbing them with knives, machetes and hatchets and strangling them with ropes," the reports reads, adding that the attackers had also looted and destroyed local property.

The massacre, which took place on Nov. 10, came as the Ethiopian army advanced on Maikadra.

The Ethiopian army launched an operation in the northern Tigray region on Nov. 4, after regional security forces of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) stormed a military base, killing soldiers and looting military assets.