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Eritrean troops fighting in Ethiopia’s Tigray region killed hundreds of people in just a few days, in late November 2020, according to witnesses interviewed by Amnesty International, reports BBC.
The November 28 and 29 massacre in the city of Axum could represent crimes against humanity, according to a report by Amnesty International.
A witness told the BBC how the bodies of those killed remained in the streets for days, being eaten by hyenas.
Ethiopia and Eritrea deny that the latter’s soldiers were in the Tigray region and declined to comment on the attacks.
The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission has announced that it is investigating the complaints.
The Prime Minister, Nobel Peace Prize winner, announced that there were no casualties
The conflict in Tigray province began on November 4, when the Ethiopian government launched an offensive to remove the Tigrin Popular Liberation Front (TPLF) from power, after the army had already conquered several military bases.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 after ending the vehicle of the conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea, went to Parliament on November 30, 2020 and said that “no civilians were killed” in the operation. He had previously announced that fighting was taking place in the area. However, witnesses in the city of Axum, Tigray province, said that on that day they began to bury the dead left by the Eritrean soldiers, most of them unarmed civilians killed at random.
According to The Independent, because telephone lines were cut and journalists had no access to Tigray, the atrocities occurred without anyone knowing.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Ahmed has repeatedly denied that Eritrean troops are in the area or that they are being used against his own people or that there have been any casualties. However, as communications with the Tigray area resume, evidence emerges showing the exact opposite.
The murders left the streets of Aksum littered with the dead. “All you could see on the streets were corpses and people crying,” said a man who had fled the city but returned after fighting broke out.
Among the dead were believers who had come to the church of St. Mary in Zion, where Christians believe in the Ark of the Covenant, a wooden chest that would have housed the 10 commandments of Moses. The massacres took place just before a major Orthodox Christian festival, Aksum Tsion Marian, which takes place on November 30.
How the massacre took place
On November 19, forces from Ethiopia and Eritrea took control of the city of Axum after a heavy offensive. According to witnesses cited by Amnesty International, Eritrean troops launched violence on November 28 and 29. The massacre began immediately after a small group of soldiers from the Tigrin People’s Liberation Front attacked a military base. The TPLF soldiers had rifles and were supported by locals armed with sticks, knives and stones. A man bringing food to TPLF soldiers counted how many civilians surrendered improvised weapons and fled when they encountered foreign fighters.
“Eritrean soldiers came to the city and started killing randomly,” he said.
Other witnesses say that foreign soldiers could easily identify them: they drove Eritrea-registered cars, had boots and specific camouflage gear, and spoke Arabic or a dialect unknown in Ethiopia. Some bore the scars of the Ben Amir group, absent from Ethiopia. Some soldiers did not try to hide their origins and told the locals that they were from Eritrea.
Survivors and witnesses told Amnesty International that foreign forces had deliberately fired at civilians since November 28. Most were unarmed and fled from the soldiers before being shot.
The following day, November 29, Eritrean soldiers allegedly fired at those trying to remove the bodies from the streets. At the same time, soldiers raided people’s homes, rounding up and killing men, teenagers, and women.
Respondents gave the names of their acquaintances and who had been killed, and Amnesty International compiled the names of more than 240 victims.
The humanitarian organization was unable to verify the total balance, but corroborating the testimonies of the witnesses and the evidence gathered, the estimate that hundreds of people were killed becomes plausible.
Burial of victims in mass graves
Most of the bodies were buried on November 30, but the gathering and burial of all the victims took several days.
Locals in Aksum say they volunteered to transport the bodies, and one man says he carried 45 bodies. Hundreds of people were reportedly buried after the massacre, and locals attended services and funerals at various churches where mass graves were made.
A few days ago, a local deacon said that 800 people died in those days.
Deprose Muchena, Amnesty International’s Director for Southern and Eastern Africa, accused Ethiopian and Eritrean troops of war crimes and called for a UN-led investigation. “The evidence is compelling and leads to a terrible conclusion. Ethiopian and Eritrean troops committed war crimes during the offensive in the city of Aksum,” he says. “Eritrean soldiers have systematically killed hundreds of people in cold blood, which would be a crime against humanity.”
Publisher: VM
