“I saw many dead people being eaten by dogs,” Tela said from a refugee camp just over the border in Sudan, his voice breaking. “I saw many people dying on the road. Many difficult things, difficult to express, difficult to imagine.”
Category: Resource
HRW: Interview – Uncovering Crimes Committed in Ethiopia’s Tigray Region
Laetitia Bader, Human Rights Watch’s Horn of Africa Director, recently returned from a research mission in Sudan to interview refugees who fled the fighting that broke out in Ethiopia’s Tigray region in early November 2020. For several weeks, federal government forces, the Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF), and their allies clashed with forces and militia allied to Tigray’s ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), in response to what Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed described as attacks by TPLF forces on federal military bases and forces in the region. The conflict has taken a heavy toll on the region’s civilian population. Here, Bader describes her impressions and some of Human Rights Watch’s initial findings.
Monok: More than two million children in Ethiopia’s Tigray region cut off from humanitarian assistance
About 2.3 million children are struggling to obtain essential humanitarian aid, including treatment for malnutrition, vital vaccines, emergency medication and water and sanitation, the children’s rights organisation, the United Nations child welfare agency, UNICEF, said on Tuesday.
The crisis also worries almost 100.000 people Eritrean refugees in Tigray. UNICEF called for “urgent, sustained, unconditional and impartial humanitarian access” to the affected families and called on the Federal Government to make the freedom of movement possible for civilians who wish to seek protection elsewhere possible.
HUMANITARIAN SOURCES: ETHIOPIAN ARMY BLOCKING PEOPLE FLEEING TO SUDAN
Humanitarian sources are telling CNN that the Ethiopian army are trying to block its citizens from fleeing the conflict.
Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy declares victory in Tigray conflict | DW News
“We jumped over dead bodies. Our neighbors were dead, but we couldn’t bury them so we just kept running. Abiy’s actions are terrible.”
In Sudan camp, a Tigray farmer once displaced by famine now shelters from war
“This is inhumane, slaughtering people, stealing all their belongings, I feel the world has betrayed Tigray because people are doing nothing while people are being killed,” said Berhan.
Mekelle hospitals struggling to care for wounded: ICRC
“We don’t want to go back, because we saw the administration of Abiy Ahmed. He kills us, Tigrinya speakers with the help of the Eritrean government,” Bereket Gebremichael said, referring to the official local language spoken in the Tigray region.
“We don’t want to be killed, so we don’t want to go back until Abiy Ahmed hands over to the people” of Tigray region, he added.
A crisis on top of crises – first COVID, now forced to flee their homes.
In Sudan, UNHCR chief @FilippoGrandi meets Ethiopian refugees from Tigray and launches an appeal for nearly US$150m.
“They were looting our properties and wanted to kill us so we all fled. We heard our people being shot. We saw dead bodies, so my family and I took what we could from our properties. We have farms that we should be harvesting but we left everything behind. Some even left their family members.”
Ethiopia PM says Tigray operation over after army seizes Mekelle
Filippo states that most of the refugees had to leave their family and work; makes mention of it being a harvest time so a major source of livelihood is lost.