The UN on Saturday condemned a deadly Ethiopian airstrike on a kindergarten in war-torn Tigray as fighting between rebels and government forces intensified along the region’s border.
The air raid on the city of Mekele came just days after fighting returned to Ethiopia’s north, shattering a five-month truce and dimming hopes of peace talks to end the brutal war.
On Saturday, the government said federal forces had withdrawn from Kobo, a city south of rebel-held Tigray, in a border region where combat erupted in the past few days.
The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which has been fighting forces allied to Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed for 21 months, said it had captured a number of towns and cities in a counteroffensive.
The tit-for-tat claims could not be independently verified, as access to northern Ethiopia is restricted.
On Friday, as conflict on the ground escalated, an airstrike on Mekele killed at least four people including two children, an official at the city’s biggest hospital said.
Tigrai TV, a local network, put the death toll at seven, including three children.
The broadcaster aired graphic footage of mangled playground equipment and a compound brightly painted with cartoons in ruins at the apparent scene of the strike.
Addis Ababa said that only military sites were targeted and accused the TPLF of “dumping fake body bags in civilian areas” to manufacture outrage.
UNICEF said the strike “hit a kindergarten, killing several children, and injuring others.”
“UNICEF strongly condemns the airstrike,” UNICEF executive director Catherine Russell said.
“Yet again, an escalation of violence in northern Ethiopia has caused children to pay the heaviest price. For almost two years, children and their families in the region have endured the agony of this conflict. It must end,” she said.
“Reports of civilian casualties following airstrikes on #Tigray are appalling,” Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean Vicky Ford wrote on Twitter.
European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management Janez Lenarcic called for international law to be respected.
“Civilians are #NotATarget,” he wrote on Twitter.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who is from Tigray, described the airstrike as “barbaric” and “horrifying.”
In March, the UN said that at least 304 civilians had been killed in the three months prior in airstrikes “apparently carried out by the Ethiopian Air Force.”
The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has documented aerial bombardments and drone strikes on refugee camps, a hotel and a market, and warned that disproportionate attacks against nonmilitary targets could amount to war crimes.
The Ethiopian Air Force operates the only known military aircraft over the country’s skies.
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