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Witnesses say that the security forces and their allies attacked civilians in Mai-Kadra with machetes and knives or strangled them with ropes. The stench of bodies lingered for days during the initial chaos of the Ethiopian government offensive in the challenging Tigray region last month. Several mass graves have been reported.
What happened from November 9 in the agricultural town near the Sudan border has become the most visible atrocity in a war largely waged in the shadows. But even here, much remains to be clarified, including who killed whom.
Witnesses from Mai-Kadra told the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission and Amnesty International that Tigrayan forces and allies attacked Amhara, one of Ethiopia’s largest ethnic groups, but a minority in Tigray. In Sudan, where nearly 50,000 people have fled, a refugee from the Amhara ethnic group gave The Associated Press a similar version.
But more than a dozen Tigray refugees told the AP it was the other way around: In strikingly similar stories, they said they and others were attacked by Ethiopian federal forces and Amhara’s allied regional troops.
Civilians of both ethnicities may have been targeted in Mai-Kadra, Amnesty now says.
“ Anyone they found, they would kill him, ” Tesfaalem Germay, an ethnic Tigrayan who fled to Sudan with his family, said of Ethiopian and Amhara forces. He said he saw hundreds of bodies, making a slashing gesture to the neck and head as he remembered the cuts.
But another refugee, Abebete Refe, told the AP that many ethnic Amhara people like him who were left behind were massacred by Tigray forces.
“ Even the government doesn’t believe that we are alive, they thought that we all died, ” he said.
The contradictory accounts are emblematic of a war little is known about since Ethiopian forces entered Tigray on November 4 and isolated the region from the world, restricting access to journalists and humanitarian workers alike. For weeks, food and other supplies have been alarmingly reduced. This week, Ethiopian security forces shot and briefly detained UN staff members who were making the first assessment of how to deliver the aid, a senior Ethiopian official said.
The Ethiopian and Tigray governments have filled the void with propaganda. Each side has used the killings in Mai-Kadra to support their cause.
The conflict began after months of friction between governments, which now consider themselves illegitimate with each other. Tigray’s leaders once dominated Ethiopia’s ruling coalition, but Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed marked them when he came to power in 2018.
Prolonged land tensions in western Tigray, where Mai-Kadra is located, between the inhabitants of Tigraya and Amhara, have added fuel to the fire.
Amnesty International said it confirmed that at least dozens, and probably hundreds, of people died in Mai-Kadra, using geolocation to verify videos and photos of the bodies. He also remotely conducted “ a limited set of interviews. ”
But Mai-Kadra “ is just the tip of the iceberg, ” Amnesty researcher Fisseha Tekle said at an event Tuesday as fears of atrocities grew in other parts of Tigray. “ Other credible allegations are emerging … not only in Mai-Kadra but also ” in the nearby city of Humera, the city of Dansha and the capital of Tigray, Mekele.
In Mai-Kadra, witnesses told the visiting Ethiopian rights commission that they saw police, militia and members of a youth group from Tigray attack Amhara.
“ The streets were still littered with bodies yet to be buried ” days later, the commission said. A man who looked at the identity cards of the dead while removing the bodies told Amnesty International that many of them read Amhara.
But several ethnic Tigrayans who have fled blamed regional Ethiopian and allied Amhara forces for the killings in the same city at the same time, saying some asked to see the identity cards before attacking.
In some cases, they said they recognized the killers as neighbors.
Samir Beyen, a mechanic, said they detained him and asked him if he was Tigrayan, then beat him and robbed him. He said he saw people being killed with knives and dozens of decomposing corpses.
“ It was like the end of the world, ” he recalled. “ We couldn’t bury them because the soldiers were close. ”
Isolated from their homes, refugees now wait in Sudan in bare concrete houses or under shelters tied with plastic and branches, playing checkers with Coca-Cola bottle caps or lying on sleeping mats, seeking a brief escape from the horrible memories.
The AP has been unable to obtain permission to travel to the Tigray region and has been unable to independently verify reports of the massacre. Neither Amnesty International nor the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission accepted requests to speak with the witnesses they interviewed.
The Ethiopian commission, an entity created under the country’s constitution, called its findings preliminary. The federal government allowed its investigators to visit Mai-Kadra, but when asked if he was also allowed to investigate other alleged atrocities, spokesman Aaron Maasho replied: “ We are working on it. ”
The UN human rights office this week called for independent investigations into the conflict, but Ethiopian officials rejected what they call interference, saying this week the government does not need a “ babysitter. ”
To assume that the government cannot do that job itself “ is disparaging, ” senior Ethiopian official Redwan Hussein told reporters on Tuesday.
The prime minister called the Mai-Kadra killings “ the epitome of moral degeneracy ” and even expressed suspicions that the perpetrators may have fled to Sudan and may be hiding among the refugees. Abiy did not offer evidence, only pointed to the number of young men among the refugees, although about half are women.
The prime minister has also rejected allegations of abuse by the Ethiopian defense force, saying it has “ not killed a single person in any city ” during the conflict.
But Tigray leader Debretsion Gebremichael blamed “ invading ” federal forces for the killings and told the AP that “ we are not people who can commit this crime, ever. ”
Ethnic friction and profiling must stop, warned UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet this week, saying they are “ fostering division and sowing the seeds for further instability and conflict ” in one region. that is already plagued by both.
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