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“VICTIMS OF MASSACRE”: This photo, taken from the air on November 21, shows a cemetery after what is described as a November 9 massacre in Mai Kadra, Ethiopia. At least 600 people have died when they were attacked by a youth gang, police and a militia, according to the AFP news agency.
The Ethiopian doctor had to flee when the hospital where he worked was bombed. He does not know where his wife and five children have gone. – They kill us with bullets, bombs and knives, he tells VG.
The civil war in Ethiopia is entering a new and more serious phase. The Prime Minister of Ethiopia has announced that people who do not escape in time will be shown “merciless”.
This has caused a flood of refugees into neighboring Sudan. VG has spoken, but one of them, a 40-year-old doctor from the city of Humera, west of the Tigray region, where fierce fighting is now taking place.
– As the government army, militias and their Eritrean allies surrounded the city, the hospital was filled with wounded. Many were missing a leg or an arm after their houses were bombed. Others had been shot at point blank range. Many were stabbed with a knife, he tells VG on a roaring phone line from Sudan.
INJURED: A young woman is injured at her home in Humera, Ethiopia, on November 22. Others in the building where he lives were killed in the rocket attack.
UN: Genocide
For the sake of the man’s safety should he return to Ethiopia, and for the sake of his relatives who are still in the country, VG does not use the man’s name. The phone call is made through Norwegian Church Aid, which works in the region.
– They were killed. They kill us with bullets, bombs and knives. I’ve seen it a lot with my own eyes. It is a genocide. I blame the government army and its allies. We have lost our homes, our livestock, our crops. They annihilate us, says the doctor.
VG cannot verify the doctor’s information, but it is a fact that the city of Humera was bombed and a large number of civilians died. The UN has expressed concern that genocide is taking place. Both sides of the conflict, both the government army and the rebels, are blamed for killing civilians.
– On November 9, the hospital was attacked. We just had to flee to the border. My wife and our five children also fled, but I don’t know where they have gone. I have not been in contact with them. The youngest child is only two years old, says the doctor.
HERE’S THE FIGHT: In Ethiopia’s Tigray region, bordering Eritrea and Sudan, a bloody civil war is raging and is now entering “phase three”. Photo: AP
– Receive questions about Norway
The war in Ethiopia broke out in early November. It happened after the “Popular Front for the Liberation of Tigray” (TPLF) held regional elections that the authorities in the capital, Addis Ababa, did not recognize.
Human rights violations have been noted in the war, and both sides have been intransigent and rejected international attempts to negotiate a ceasefire.
The Ethiopian State Human Rights Commission has reported that a massacre took place west of Tigray on 9 November. The commission claims 600 people were killed in the city of Mai Kadra when young militants went door to door and killed people from the Amhara and Wolkait minority groups, reports NTB.
These ethnic groups are in conflict with the Tigray ethnic group, which constitutes the majority of the refugees now fleeing the region. Amnesty International has not been able to determine who was behind the outrage, but witnesses believe it was the rebels, not the government army, who were responsible for the brutal killings.
ON THE RUN: Desperate people from the town of Tigray cross a river to reach neighboring Sudan this weekend.
Clinic in tent camp
Doctors and health personnel who fled Humera hospital now run a clinic in the tent camp called “Village Eight”, across the border from Sudan.
Here, the doctor VG has spoken to has worked for nearly two weeks to help other refugees, in collaboration with, among others, Norwegian Church Aid. The country’s representative for the organization, Berte Marie Ulveseter, is in a field near the border.
Describes a very serious situation.
IN ETHIOPIA: Sudan’s representative for the organization, Berte Marie Ulveseter, speaks with a refugee from the war in Ethiopia in the field called “village eight” in Sudan. Photo: Norwegian Church Aid
– At least 45,000 refugees have arrived. In the camp where we are now there are 12,000 people who share 58 latrines and three water poles. You can imagine for yourself what the sanitary conditions are like, Ulveseter tells VG.
– Many of the refugees I have spoken to tell the same story as this doctor: they fled from the neck above their heads, while people were shot or cut with a knife. They are the only witnesses we have, as the government cut off the telephone network, mobile network and internet in Tigray, he says.
PEACE AWARD WINNER: Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed received a tribute from the balcony of the Grand Hotel in Oslo on December 10, 2019. Photo: Terje Pedersen / NTB
Received the Peace Prize
On Thursday, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali, a man who was in Norway last year to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, ordered the army to attack Mekele, the regional capital of Tigray.
“Ethiopia’s national defense forces were ordered to initiate the third and final phase of our operation,” he said.
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War in Ethiopia: – The biggest loss of reputation for the Peace Prize to date
Berte Marie Ulveseter at Norwegian Church Aid says that many of the refugees they have met ask questions when they find out that she is from Norway.
– There is a reaction to the Prime Minister receiving the Peace Prize. She received the award for securing peace with Eritrea, but many say it came too early, she says.
– “Look what he’s doing now,” we face. It is not very peaceful to drop bombs on the heads of civilians, says Ulveseter.
WEAPONS: Members of the local militia in Amhara on their way to fight the TPLF in Sanja. Photo: TIKSA STATE / REUTERS
Civilians must be protected
The rebel leadership in TPLF has communicated with the outside world via satellite phone and announced that “Tigray is ready to fight to the last man.”
The TPLF has been accused of committing war crimes and, according to the prime minister, several thousand soldiers of the movement have laid down their arms and surrendered to federal forces in recent days.
– In this last phase, we will do everything possible to protect innocent civilians, says the Prime Minister.
P.S: The doctor VG has spoken to says that he has also been a refugee in the neighboring country before: when he was 4 years old, he and his family had to go to Sudan during the drought and famine in Ethiopia. He thanks Sudan for keeping two border crossings open, but these borders are now reported to have been closed due to pressure from Ethiopia.
