Nairobi, Kenya (AP) – A woman shaken by a shooting around her city in Ethiopia’s northern Tigre region has decided to get out. She joined the long line at the local government office for the necessary paperwork for the trip. But when he reached the officer, he told her she had wasted her time.
“This is for people who are volunteering to fight.”
This is because the Ethiopian government is waging war in its Tigris region and trying to arrest its notorious leaders, who consider the federal government illegal after the fall. In power, the battle that could destabilize Africa’s horn is hidden from the outside view. Roads are blocked and the airport is closed.
But one of the few hundred people evacuated from Tigris this week gave rare details of anger, frustration and growing hunger in an interview with the Associated Press as both sides reject international calls for dialogue, or even help for the humanitarian corridor. In their third week of combat. The United Nations says Foodstuffs and other essentials “will soon be exhausted, putting millions at risk.”
It is very difficult to listen to the accounts of the frontline support staff, the victims on the ground, using the fact that the number of satellite phones to reach the world is declining due to supply disruptions at Tigre borders. At least several hundred people have been killed, and the United Nations has condemned targeted attacks on civilians based on their race. Or religion. ”
The woman, an Ethiopian aid expert who spoke on condition of anonymity out of concern for herself and loved ones, gave a highly detailed account of the food, fuel, cash and water shortages of a population of about 6 million. Lightning strikes when the Ethiopian army approaches the Tigris capital every day.
“I tell you, people will slowly start dying,” he said.
Not all of his accounts could be verified. But the description of his journey from Tigre’s capital, Macaulay, to Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, fits with others including aid workers, diplomats, a senior university official and some Sud more than 35,000 refugees who have fled to Sudan. After the fighting began in November. She. It was connected to the AP by a foreign daredevil.
Borders, roads and airports have closed rapidly since Ethiopia’s prime minister Announcing that Tigre forces had attacked the military base, the woman felt torn. Her family was in Addis Ababa and they wanted to live with them.
Banks were closed, but loved ones gave him enough money to travel to Macaulay. As she drove away, she squeezed her car through temporary barriers of stones swallowed by local youths. He said he doesn’t see the fight.
In Mekele she met with friends around the university. She was shocked by what he saw. “It was a panic,” he said. “Students slept outside the university because they came from all over.” There was little to feed them. The supply in the markets was low.
While in Macaulay, he said, he heard three “bombings” in front of the city. The Ethiopian government has confirmed air strikes around the city. “It was a great tragedy,” Prime Minister Abi Ahmed said in a televised comment to Tigre citizens not to gather for their safety. “People said, ‘Is he totally bombing us?’ There was a lot of anger, people pushing and saying ‘I want to fight.’
When she was visiting a loved one at a university hospital, “the doctor said he had no medicine, no insulin. At all! “She said.” They were hoping that (the International Committee of the Red Cross) would give them something.
Trying to travel to Addis Ababa, he found fuel on the black market, but was warned that his car could be the target. But the UN and other aid groups arranged for a convoy to evacuate non-essential staff to the Ethiopian capital, and they found a place on the bus. “I think I was very lucky,” he said.
But the buses pulled out of the capital, she was afraid.
A convoy of about 20 vehicles headed east of Tigre for the capital of Afar region at night, then slowly moving from the unstable Amra area, from outpost to outpost, not all security personnel gave details of their evacuation. .
The woman said of the trip, “It took a total of four days,” which would have taken one day by direct route. “I was really scared.” Tigre Special Forces initially kept an eye on the convoy, he said. Near the end, federal police were with him. They were “very proactive,” he said.
Now, after arriving in Addis Ababa earlier this week, he will add his voice to the growing calls for dialogue between the two governments, which now outlaw each other after the once dominant Tigre regional party and its members were marginalized under Abia’s reformist two. -Rule.
“I think they should negotiate.” “And we really need a corridor so that food and medicine can come. What about people?”
The possibility of dialogue seems remote. The U.S. embassy in Tigre this week asked the remaining civilians to return to their homes if they did not return to safety.
Like other concerned families in Ethiopia and Diaspora, the woman cannot reach the relatives left behind. Many foreigners are still trapped in Tigray, he said.
“No one knows who is alive, who is dead,” he said. “This is a disaster for me.”
On Thursday, she said, she was able to talk to a friend at the university in Macaulay. The university was hit by an airstrike. More than 20 students were injured.
“She was crying,” Hijrati said. “She’s a strong woman, I know her.” His voice was trembling.
.
