Scores of civilians were killed in a “massacre” in Ethiopia’s Tigray region that witnesses blamed on forces backing the local ruling party in its fight against the federal government, Amnesty International said on Thursday.
It was the first reported incident of large-scale civilian fatalities in a week-old conflict between the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) party and the government of Ethioian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, winner of last year’s Nobel Peace Prize.
The Amnesty report came the same day Abiy said that government forces had made gains in western Tigray, and as thousands of Ethiopians continued to flee across the border into neighboring Sudan, stoking fears of a humanitarian crisis.
Photo: AFP
“Amnesty International can today confirm ... that scores, and likely hundreds, of people were stabbed or hacked to death in Mai-Kadra town in the South West Zone of Ethiopia’s Tigray Region on the night of 9 November,” the rights group said in a report.
Amnesty had “digitally verified gruesome photographs and videos of bodies strewn across the town or being carried away on stretchers,” it said.
The dead “had gaping wounds that appear to have been inflicted by sharp weapons such as knives and machetes,” Amnesty said, citing witness accounts.
Witnesses said that the attack was carried out by TPLF-aligned forces after a defeat at the hands of the Ethiopian military, although Amnesty said that it “has not been able to confirm who was responsible for the killings.”
There was no immediate reaction from the TPLF, which dominated national politics for nearly three decades before Abiy took office in 2018.
Abiy on Wednesday last week ordered military operations in Tigray, saying that they were prompted by a TPLF attack on federal military camps — a claim the party denies.
The region has been under a communications blackout ever since.
Officials have said that hundreds have been killed and analysts are warning of a bloody, protracted civil war in Africa’s second-most populous country.
In a Facebook post on Thursday, Abiy said government forces had “liberated” the western zone of Tigray — made up of six zones, plus the capital and surrounding areas.
Abiy also accused TPLF-aligned fighters of “cruelty,” saying that when the army took control of the town of Sheraro they “found bodies of executed defense force personnel whose hands and feet were tied.”
Regional state media in Tigray countered that pro-TPLF forces had retaken territory earlier seized by federal forces.
The report also said that TPLF forces had “captured” 10,000 soldiers.
The conflict has seen multiple rounds of air strikes targeting arms and fuel depots along with heavy fighting in western Tigray.
The UN said that about 11,000 Ethiopians have sought refuge in neighboring Sudan, which says it would house the influx in a camp for victims of a 1980s famine.
Exhausted refugees, mostly women, youths and children, arrived on foot or by bicycle and motorized rickshaw, a correspondent for Agence France-Presse reported from the Hamdait border area of Sudan’s eastern Kassala state.
Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok has called for a “stop to the fighting as soon as possible” and a return to the negotiating table.
The African Union has also called for an immediate stop to fighting and dialogue.
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