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ADDIS ABABA, Dec 17 (Reuters) – Rebel soldiers used government tanks to attack former comrades at a military base in the chaotic first days of Ethiopia’s month-long war in the Tigray region, according to two soldiers trapped in the which they described as a 10-day siege.
Forces still loyal to Tigray’s former ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), surrounded the Sero base near the northern border with Eritrea on November 4, according to the two men. Within days, food and water were running out, forcing those inside to ration supplies, they said.
They said the siege reached its climax on the 10th when TPLF reinforcements with tanks, anti-aircraft guns and mortars arrived to try to take over the base. They described a six-hour bombardment in which some soldiers tried to escape through the back of the compound but were captured.
“Even after we surrendered, they stabbed one of our members for no reason,” said one of the soldiers, Takele Ambaye. He said he saw the bodies of 15 colleagues, some with cut wounds, others who had been shot.
The description provided to Reuters by Takele and Molla Kassa, another soldier, supports the government’s accounts of how the conflict began. It is also consistent with details provided by a senior military official in a press conference broadcast on state television on November 10.
However, the TPLF denies having started the conflict.
“We did not initiate any attacks,” the group’s leader, Debretsion Gebremichael, told Reuters in a text message last month, although he said some soldiers “joined us in rejecting the federal treatment of Tigray.”
Reuters has not been able to reach TPLF officials for further comment.
Reuters was also unable to independently verify the accounts of the two soldiers, as communications with that part of Tigray are down and the government restricts access to the region. Government and military officials did not respond to requests for comment.
The government says its forces have regained control of major cities and towns, and a new transitional administration is working to restore order in Tigray.
But the experiences recounted by Molla and Takele help explain why bitter divisions persist.
“The cruellest thing is that I stayed there (in Tigray) for 21 years. I stayed longer than with my own mother who raised me,” Molla said. “What kind of animals are they?”
Reuters spoke to Molla and Takele by phone this month, before an army spokesman announced a ban on soldiers speaking to the media. The men said that after their surrender, the TPLF held them captive in various locations before they were released with 200 other Sero soldiers, eventually reaching the city of Sekota in the neighboring Amhara region.
Government officials have told Reuters that the TPLF trucked thousands of captive soldiers to the Amhara border and released them. Officials have not specified whether there were Sero soldiers among them. Other soldiers were released by federal forces as they advanced towards the regional capital, Mekelle, the government said.
THE CONFLICT BEGINS
The government says that fighters loyal to the TPLF attacked federal military bases at various locations in Tigray in early November 4 after disrupting communications. It says that TPLF fighters seized control of the Army Northern Command headquarters in Mekelle and raided the federal armories.
A United Nations security report dated November 6, seen by Reuters, said that Tigrayan forces had seized heavy weapons from several warehouses.
The fighters included members of the national defense force, who killed other soldiers in their beds and seized their weapons, Redwan Hussein, spokesman for the government’s emergency task force in Tigray, told Reuters.
At the November 10 press conference, Lieutenant General Bacha Debele said that radio communications were cut off at the Tigray military bases at 10:00 pm on November 3. The next day, he said, a group of senior officers were kidnapped from a regular dinner with Tigrayan officers, while in other locations, soldiers were surrounded.
“Many died on both sides,” he said, without providing evidence. “They buried their militia while stripping the bodies of our soldiers of their uniforms and leaving them under the scorching sun … the dead were eaten by vultures.”
AMARGAS DIVISIONS
Molla and Takele said shots were fired at the Sero base, where between 250 and 300 government soldiers were stationed, around 5 a.m. on November 4. The attackers initially withdrew when government soldiers returned fire, they said.
They said they asked local residents who was behind the attack and were told by a TPLF officer that the army commanders had agreed to hand over their weapons to the TPLF and that the soldiers inside the base should obey.
“We said we never received such orders from above and we told them that we were not going to surrender the weapons. The weapons belong to the nation,” Molla said.
In the siege that followed, when TPLF forces surrounded the base, those inside rationed food into a meal of flour at noon to conserve supplies, but after eight days, the base ran out of food, they said.
“They ate us like a cat eats its child after giving birth,” Molla said.
The two soldiers said that the betrayal of the former comrades had cemented their desire to avenge their comrades and capture the fugitive leaders of the TPLF.
“We couldn’t even bury our friends and brothers. They stopped us from burying them,” Takele said. “I want to join my friends and fight.” (Information from the Addis Ababa newsroom; edited by Alexandra Zavis and Nick Tattersall)
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