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When the Ethiopian army bombed Humera, a small farming town in Tigray, in mid-November, 54-year-old Gush Tela took his wife and three children to safety in a nearby town.
A few days later, he felt compelled to find out what had happened to his home. As he approached the city on his motorcycle, crossing the arid countryside, he said that the stench of countless corpses filled the air.
Men, women and children lay scattered along the road and in the surrounding fields, their bodies riddled with bullet holes, Tela said.
“I saw many dead being eaten by dogs,” said Tela from a refugee camp just across the border in Sudan, her voice cracking. “I saw a lot of people die on the road. Many difficult things, difficult to express, difficult to imagine ”.
Tigray was plunged into conflict on November 4, when Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed ordered a military campaign against the region’s ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. Abiy accused the TPLF of attacking federal military camps in Tigray and seeking to destabilize the country, which the TPLF denies.
Accounts of egregious violence committed by multiple actors on both sides of the conflict have emerged, but with communications down and media blocked, it has been impossible to independently verify the incidents and who was responsible.
On Wednesday, the United Nations said so and the Ethiopian government had signed an agreement to allow “unhindered” humanitarian access to Tigray, at least the parts that are now under the control of the federal government. Help may come too late for some. For weeks, the UN and others have called for access amid reports that food, medicine and other supplies are running out for millions of people.
Before the conflict, the worsening political tensions between Addis Ababa and the TPLF seemed remote for Tela. “I was just looking for work. He was not very interested in the political process. I didn’t know anything about what was happening, “he said. “I never felt like this situation would happen.”
The faint outlines of Tigrayan buildings and telephone towers cut across the milky sky in Hamdayet, the small, impoverished Sudanese border town where Tela and 3,000 other refugees are camped. They are among more than 45,000 who have fled the violence, traveling for days through forests and over the Sittet River to safety in Sudan. A second camp has sprung up at Um Raquba.
Many of the refugees suffer from multiple illnesses, often acquired in the grueling journey of several days. Clinics in the two camps are struggling to provide needed care. Those who have made it speak of desperate people left behind, blocked by Ethiopian federal forces.
Over the weekend, federal troops seized Tigrayan’s capital, Mekelle, and officials in Addis Ababa said military operations were complete. The TPLF, which had dominated Ethiopia’s ruling coalition for decades before Abiy came to power in 2018, appears to have withdrawn, signaling the end of fighting on the battlefield for now, though experts warn that the forces Federalists could face a protracted insurgency.
Some 600,000 people in Tigray were already dependent on food aid even before the conflict, including more than 100,000 refugees from Eritrea. The UN had warned of the risk of people starving to death in the coming days unless access is allowed.
Isolated Sudanese peoples in one of the poorest regions on Earth have opened their homes to their neighbors, but the pressures are acute. A transitional government in place since the ouster of Omar al-Bashir last year is struggling to cope with discontent over the worsening economy and shortages of essential supplies.
Before the refugee influx, the region was already in dire need of support and development, according to Imad Aoun of Doctors Without Borders. “They are almost two crises one on top of the other,” he said. “We are trying to mitigate some of this, on the one hand providing support to those who come and supporting the local system.”
Reports of atrocities have fueled the conflict, which may fuel ethnic and other tensions in Africa’s second most populous country. In one of the worst incidents, Amnesty International reported that dozens, possibly hundreds, of civilians were massacred with knives and machetes in a town south of Humera in early November. Witnesses told Amnesty that forces loyal to the TPLF were to blame, although Amnesty said it had not been able to independently confirm responsibility.
Cloth moves cautiously and has bandages wrapped around her calves and wrists. He said federal soldiers had found him in Humera and beat him until he was covered in blood and could not walk, and then handed him over to a brutal force of ethnic Amhrawi militias called Fano. He said that the Fano had been tasked with destroying the city and “taking down” the Tigrayans.
El Fano had taken over a judicial court in Humera. Tela, barely moving and dripping blood, said she was allowed to get up. Gesturing with a knife to his neck, he said he saw a man in his 30s beheaded with machetes.
Refugees in the camp tell horror stories they witnessed or heard from others. In a makeshift pavilion in a room near the back of the camp, some show wounds that they say were caused by knife and machete attacks by the Fano militia.
Over the past month, Tefera Tedros, a 42-year-old surgeon, has seen the results of the violence up close. Before the war broke out, he divided his time between a government hospital and a private clinic. “It was very successful,” he said. “I was keeping [a good life], send my children to school and all the basic needs. Now everything is gone. “
Tedros said his hospital in Humera received 15 civilians killed on the first day of the shelling on November 8. “But those who were not taken to the hospital, those who died on the streets or at home, were uncountable,” he said.
With his colleagues, he desperately loaded critical patients onto tractors borrowed from nearby people and drove them to the larger city of Adwa, ammunition ricocheting through the city. He then fled into the forest and finally reached Hamdayet.
He is the only doctor in one of the camp’s two clinics, who works around the clock. “They have spent 10 days working, 24 hours [a day]. This clinic was designed to see no more than 50 patients per day, maximum. We are now treating 200 patients, ”he said. “We are running out of drugs every time, so we are using secondary options, tertiary options. Not the drugs we need, but the drugs we have. “
Tedros said the trip to Hamdayet had caused serious damage to many in the camp. “Respiratory diseases are very common now because people have walked long distances that were full of dust and slept on the ground without sheets, mattresses, nothing. Most have lung infections. “
Abdominal and skin diseases are also common among refugees. “We were drinking from the ponds, just from the cattle side,” he said.
Aid agencies have stepped in to provide medicines and vital care, but this was not enough, he said. There are people with diabetes, HIV and cancer in the camp who are not accessing treatment.
The reproductive health needs of women are also dangerously unmet. Twenty pregnant women were due to give birth soon in Hamdayet, Tedros said. In Um Raqaba camp, a 26-year-old refugee told UNFPA officials late last month that she started menstruating the day she arrived and that she had sold her phone to buy cotton underwear and soap.
Despite the horrors they relate, many of the refugees are eager to return, hoping that they will not have to leave forever. They are sensitive to any resentment or criticism of Tigray’s leadership.
Ngisti Yohans, 27, fled with her son after hearing reports that militias raped Tigrayans. He accused Abiy of exploiting ethnic divisions and fueling resentment. “It is purely ethnic,” he said. “The country was fair but Abiy wanted all the power. The government made it look like the problems with Ethiopia were due to Tigray. “
The rest of his family remains in Tigray. “My life is there, my family,” he said. “I’m just waiting to see if things improve.”
