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NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) – Shocked by gunfire around her town in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia, the woman decided to leave. He joined a long line at the local government office for the paperwork needed to travel. But when he got to the officer, he told him that he was wasting his time.
“This is for people who are volunteering to fight,” he said.
As the Ethiopian government wages war in its Tigray region and seeks to arrest its defiant leaders, who see the federal government as illegitimate after a power dispute, the fight that could destabilize the Horn of Africa is hidden from view. exterior view. Communications are cut off, roads blocked and airports closed.
But as one of the few hundred people who were evacuated this week from Tigray, the woman in an interview with The Associated Press offered rare details of anger, despair and growing hunger as both sides rejected international calls for dialogue, or even a corridor. humanitarian aid, in its third week of deadly struggle. The United Nations says that food and other essentials “will soon run out, putting millions at risk.”
With supplies blocked at the Tigray borders and frenzied humanitarian workers using fewer and fewer satellite phones to reach the world, it is extremely difficult to hear the accounts of those suffering on the ground. At least several hundred people have been killed and the United Nations has condemned “targeted attacks against civilians based on their ethnicity or religion.”
The woman, an Ethiopian aid expert who spoke on condition of anonymity out of concern for herself and her loved ones, gave one of the most detailed accounts yet of a population of some 6 million people who lack food, fuel, cash and even water, and no electricity as the Ethiopian army approaches the capital of Tigray every day.
“I tell you that people will slowly start to die,” he said.
Your entire account could not be verified. But the description of his passage through the capital of Tigray, Mekele, to the capital of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, fits with others that have left humanitarian workers, diplomats, a senior university official and some of the more than 30,000 refugees who have fled. to Sudan. after the fighting began on November 4. A foreign evacuee connected her to the AP.
When borders, roads and airports were quickly closed after Ethiopia’s prime minister announced that Tigray’s forces had attacked a military base, the woman felt torn. He had family in Addis Ababa and wanted to be with them.
The banks had closed, but his loved ones gave him enough money to travel to Mekele. As he drove, his car drove through makeshift stone barriers piled up by local youth. She said she didn’t see fights.
At Mekele, he met friends from college. She was surprised by what she saw. “It was a panic,” he said. “The students slept outside the university because they had come from everywhere.” There was little to feed them. Supplies in the markets were running low.
While in Mekele, he said, he heard three “bombings” against the city. The Ethiopian government has confirmed airstrikes in the city. When Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in televised remarks told civilians in Tigray not to gather for their safety, “it was a huge panic,” he said. “People said, ‘Is it going to bomb us completely?’ There was great anger, people pushed and said: ‘I want to fight.’
When he visited a loved one in a university hospital, “a doctor said they had no medicine, no insulin. Not at all! “She said.” They were hoping that the (International Committee of the Red Cross) would give them some. “
When looking to travel to Addis Ababa, he found fuel on the black market, but was warned that his car could be a target. But the UN and other aid groups had managed to organize a convoy to evacuate non-essential personnel to the Ethiopian capital, and she found a place on one of the buses. “I think I was very lucky,” he said.
But when the buses left the capital, she was scared.
The convoy of about 20 vehicles made its way overnight towards the capital of the arid Afar region east of Tigray, then through the restless Amhara region, going slowly from one checkpoint to another, not all forces security that the crew reported on the evacuation. .
“It was four days in total,” said the woman about the trip, which would have lasted a day by direct route. “I was very scared”. Tigray special forces guarded the convoy at first, he said. Near the end, the federal police accompanied him. They were “very disciplined,” he said.
Now, after arriving in Addis Ababa earlier this week, he adds his voice to the growing calls for dialogue between the two governments, which are now considered illegal after the once dominant regional Tigray party and its members were marginalized. under the reformist policy of Abiy. rule of the year.
“I think they should negotiate,” he said. “And we really need a corridor so that food and medicine can get in. What about people?”
The prospect of dialogue seems distant. The United States Embassy this week told citizens remaining in Tigray to shelter in place if they cannot leave safely.
Like other concerned families in Ethiopia and the diaspora, the woman is unable to communicate with her relatives left behind. Many foreigners are still trapped in Tigray as well, he said.
“Nobody knows who is alive, who is dead,” he said. “This is a catastrophe for me.”
On Thursday, he said, he managed to speak to a friend from college in Mekele. The university had been hit by an air raid. More than 20 students were injured.
“She was crying,” the evacuee said. “She is a strong woman, I know.” His voice was shaking.
