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Refugees walked for days to cross the border, dodging airstrikes and well-armed soldiers in their country’s escalating civil war. Many now sleep outdoors in isolated villages or under trees in a dusty camp for displaced people that has not been used for decades.
As conflict rages in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia, a rapidly growing refugee crisis is building in the eastern provinces of neighboring Sudan: Almost 40,000 people have sought safety in the last two weeks and many more are expected in the coming days.
At a newly opened camp and at the two main refugee transit points along Sudan’s border with Ethiopia, The New Humanitarian found little help waiting for the new arrivals, who shared heartbreaking stories of how they escaped the airstrikes and the militias at their home in Tigray.
“When the aerial bombardments and attacks started, I just ran and left most of my family behind,” said 22-year-old Zanabi Fasaha, who arrived on Sunday after fleeing Humera, a city near the Sudan border. “I am here now without family, money, food or assistance.”
Various humanitarian organizations are on the ground in eastern Sudan, setting up water points and distributing food and materials for refugees to build temporary shelters, while Sudanese authorities and local communities are also involved in the relief effort.
But the pace of the new arrivals has outstripped the capacity of aid groups, according to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR.
So far, only basic relief items such as high-energy cookies, blankets, mats and soap have been provided as more food and shelter supplies need to be transported from larger cities in Sudan.
The conflict in Tigray, which has already claimed hundreds of lives, began when the Ethiopian federal government accused the ruling party of the northern region, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), of an attack on a military camp, a charge that the TPLF denies.
The Ethiopian government claims that its forces have since launched airstrikes and ground assaults against military forces aligned with the Tigrayan party, the dominant force in Ethiopian politics until the country’s prime minister, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Abiy Ahmed, took office in April 2018.
But the testimonies of half a dozen Tigray refugees interviewed by TNH challenge the government’s narrative of events, with all the refugees accusing the Ethiopian army and allied militias of killing civilians.
TNH cannot independently verify the claims made by the refugees because telephone and internet connections have been cut in Tigray, and movement into the area is restricted. The Ethiopian government and human rights groups have also accused forces aligned with the TPLF of committing massacres.
‘We witnessed horrible things’
On Tuesday, Abiy said the Ethiopian army had begun its “final and crucial” offensive to capture the capital of the Tigray region, Mekelle, although analysts predict a protracted conflict that could destabilize the region as a whole.
Regional forces and local TPLF militias are believed to number up to 250,000 between them. The Ethiopian army, meanwhile, has around 150,000 well-trained soldiers and more than a dozen fighter jets and helicopter gunships.
Last week, the TPLF fired several rockets at the Eritrean capital, Asmara. The TPLF accuses Ethiopia’s neighbor of providing military support to government forces in Abiy.
Read more → The Tigray conflict in Ethiopia causes hundreds of deaths and thousands flee to Sudan
The UN’s emergency aid coordinating body, OCHA, said tens of thousands of people have been displaced within Tigray, though few are likely to receive aid, given restrictions on roads within and outside the region.
In Sudan, Tigrayans, many of whom said it was their second or third time taking refuge, having fled the long 1974-1991 civil war in Ethiopia and the bloody 1998-2000 conflict with Eritrea, came with stories. alarming.
Some of the accounts suggested that the killings in Mai-Kadra, the scene of a massacre in western Tigray widely attributed to the TPLF-aligned militia, were the work of the government-aligned Amhara militia.
Tikhlai Abraham, a 40-year-old woman from Mai-Kadra, said the area came under “continuous attack” from fighter jets, tanks and militiamen from the neighboring Amhara region, which supports the government offensive.
Abraham said his home was razed shortly after his family abandoned it. As he fled, he said he saw the bodies of two dead children on the ground. She blamed the “brutal militias [for] massacring people, including children. “
“I suffered a lot and my children carried me sometimes”
Two other refugees from Mai-Kadra shared similar accounts of the violence. Wargi Amana, 35, said she saw the house of one of her neighbors collapse while the family was inside.
Amana told TNH that she was separated from her husband and all but one of her three children, while fleeing the attacks. “I don’t know if they crossed the border or are still in Ethiopia,” he said. “I can’t go back … because the slaughter continues and I have to protect the only son in my hands.”
Refugees from other areas of Tigray told TNH similar stories.
Tishpho Gabriel, 65, said he had “witnessed horrible things” in Humera, a city near the border with Sudan that has seen particularly heavy fighting. These included Amhara fighters who attacked “families using … light and heavy weapons [and] slaughter [people with] knives ”.
Gabriel said Ethiopian troops and Amhara militiamen chased fleeing refugees towards the border and tried to prevent them from crossing. “The journey was very hard for me when I was old,” she said. “I suffered a lot and my children carried me sometimes.”
Help groups overwhelmed
Jens Hesemann, UNHCR’s deputy representative in Sudan, told TNH that several UN agencies are responding to the crisis. Other support groups are also present, including Muslim Aid and the Sudanese Red Crescent Society.
Hesemann said most of the refugees were converging in two border areas: a town of about 5,000 people called Hamdayet that has a small UNHCR-run transit center, and a 4,000-home village called Village 8.
Both places have quickly reached their capacity. The Hamdayet transit center accommodates a few hundred refugees, but thousands have arrived in the city after taking boats or fording waist-deep water from the nearby Tekeze River.
In Village 8, which is about a three-hour drive from Hamdayet, refugees have occupied around 800 housing units that were empty before their arrival, although many still sleep outside using mats and blankets loaded across the border. .
Efforts to provide aid to Village 8 and relocate the refugees to a larger camp have been complicated by access limitations – a slow-moving ferry is required across a river to reach the settlement, which Hesemann says was originally built to house local residents. displaced by a dam project.
“It’s a very difficult situation and we haven’t done enough yet,” Hesemann said.
Thousands of refugees who stayed in Hamdayet have been taken to an existing camp called Um Rakuba, which was built in the 1980s to house Ethiopians fleeing famine and was closed in the early 2000s.
The isolated camp has the capacity to house about 6,000 people, according to Hesemann, but cannot be expanded at the moment due to the unharvested agricultural land surrounding the site.
Shelter kits for refugees in Um Rakuba are expected to arrive next week, according to Hesemann. For now, the UN official said residents are building temporary shelters with plastic sheeting and sticks provided by aid groups.
“We thank Sudan for their efforts to help us with food and clean water, but the situation is bad and there are no services in this camp,” said Halima Burham, a 30-year-old Tigrayana refugee who recently arrived in Um Rakuba.
Alrasheed Aldaw, a government official with the Sudan Humanitarian Aid Commission, told TNH in Village 8 on Sunday that eight other existing refugee camps in the eastern states of Kassala and Gedaref could be used if more refugees arrive. It appears that a camp in Gedaref has already been identified.
Local concerns
Axel Bisschop, UNHCR’s top official in Sudan, said Sunday that the agency is planning for up to 100,000 refugees to cross the border, an influx not seen in eastern Sudan in the past two decades.
While local communities provided most of the initial support in areas like Village 8, some residents told TNH they fear the influx could put pressure on the country, which is undergoing its own fragile political transition.
Read more → Fighting the generals: a report on Sudan’s transition to democracy
Ahmed Alhaj, a 59-year-old local resident who lives four kilometers from Village 8, said the new arrivals could create tensions with host communities. “Sudan is already suffering …” he said. “Resources are already dwindling.”
On Wednesday, TPLF leader Debretsion Gebremichael promised not to surrender to federal troops and called on the Tigrayans to mobilize in greater numbers against the government. “Tigray is now hell for his enemies,” Gebremichael said.
As the conflict escalates, Tirhas Nuham, a 35-year-old woman from Mai-Kadra who has spent most of her life in Sudan after having fled the country twice before, said civilians should not be targeted.
“We are normal citizens and we have nothing to do with politics,” Nuham said. “We have the right to live [in Ethiopia] and not be forced to leave. “
Additional reporting from Philip Kleinfeld in Bamako.
ma / pk / ag
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