Aid agencies have suspended operations in an area of Ethiopia’s Tigray region where a deadly airstrike hit a camp for people displaced by the country’s civil war, the UN said on Sunday.
The raid came only hours after the Ethiopian government had issued a call for “national reconciliation,” and sparked renewed appeals from an alarmed international community for an end to the brutal conflict.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement that the attack at midnight on Friday in the town of Dedebit in northwestern Tigray had “caused scores of civilian casualties, including deaths,” based on the agency’s preliminary information.
Photo: Reuters
“Humanitarian partners suspended activities in the area due to the ongoing threats of drone strikes,” it said.
The rebel Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) said that the attack had killed 56 people, while an official at the region’s main hospital in the capital, Mekele, reported 55 dead and 126 injured.
TPLF spokesman Getachew Reda also wrote on Twitter on Sunday that the Eritrean military had launched attacks against its fighters in northwestern Tigray on Saturday.
He accused Eritrea of seeking to “sabotage any & all peacemaking efforts in the region ostensibly to protect ‘Ethiopia’s unity.’”
The various claims could not be independently verified because access to the region is restricted and it remains under a communications blackout.
There was no response to requests for comment from Ethiopian government officials.
Eritrean troops have fought in support of Ethiopian government forces against the TPLF, and been accused of committing atrocities including rapes and massacres in Tigray.
OCHA said that the lack of essential supplies, especially medical supplies and fuel, was “severely disrupting the response to the injured, and [has] led to the nearly total collapse of the health system in Tigray.”
“The intensification of airstrikes is alarming, and we once again remind all parties to the conflict to respect their obligations under international humanitarian law,” it said.
The fighting between forces loyal to Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and the TPLF has killed thousands of people and forced several million from their homes.
Tigray itself is under what the UN calls a de facto blockade that is preventing lifesaving food and medicine from reaching its 6 million people, including hundreds of thousands in famine-like conditions.
Doctors at the Ayder Referral Hospital earlier this month issued a statement painting a bleak picture of desperation, saying that patients, including children, were needlessly dying because of the blockade.
The Dedebit strike came the same day that the Ethiopian government announced an amnesty for several senior TPLF figures and other high-profile opposition leaders in what it said was a bid to foster national dialogue and “unity.”
The amnesty has been welcomed by the global community as a possible way out of the fighting, which has threatened to tear apart Africa’s second-most populous country.
It followed a dramatic turnaround in fortunes on the battlefield, with the rebels retreating to their Tigray stronghold at the end of last month in the face of a military offensive that saw government forces retake a string of strategic towns.
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