Nearly 70% of health facilities in Ethiopia’s conflict-hit northern region of Tigray have been vandalised and equipment looted, a report by medical charity MSF has found.
The facilities were “deliberately” attacked to make them “non-functional”, Médecins Sans Frontières said.
Violence in Ethiopia’s Tigray region has extended to attacks on health facilities, with barely one in 10 functioning. Of the 106 health facilities MSF teams visited, one in five had been or was occupied by armed soldiers; one facility is being used as an army base.
The damaged, looted facilities and resulting lack of medical staff means people in the region have very little access to healthcare. MSF urges all armed groups in the area to respect medical facilities and for services to be restored as soon as possible.
A statement issued Monday by Doctors Without Borders, know by its French initials MSF, said “treatment structures in the Ethiopian region of Tigray were looted, vandalised and destroyed in a deliberate and generalised manner” according to its observers in the area.
The group said it had visited 106 sites between mid-December and early March, and that 70 percent had been looted.
Only 13 percent “functioned normally”, the French-language statement added.
“One health establishment in five visited by MSF teams were occupied by soldiers. In certain cases, this occupation was temporary, while in others, it continued during the visit,” the group said.
The State Department on Friday said Washington has decided not to lift the pause in assistance to Ethiopia for most programs in the security sector, days after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken described acts in Tigray as ethnic cleansing.
Skinny, hungry, fleeing threats of violence, thousands of people who have been hiding in rural areas of Ethiopia’s Tigray region have begun arriving in a community that can barely support them – and more are said to be on the way.
The Council today adopted conclusions stressing on the one hand Ethiopia’s important role as a strategic partner and a key multilateral actor, and on the other hand reiterating the EU’s great concerns regarding the situation in the Tigray region and the wider region.
Ethiopian authorities and others obstructing humanitarian aid into the Tigray region could end up on an EU sanctions list, under a new idea floated by the European Commission.
The Brussels executive, on Wednesday (10 March), said it will consider listing people who violated international humanitarian law under its EU sanctions regimes.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday that Eritrean forces in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region must withdraw, saying the situation is unacceptable and must change.
“The challenge in Ethiopia is very significant. And it’s one that we’re very, very focused on, particularly the situation in Tigray where we are seeing very credible reports of human rights abuses and atrocities that are ongoing,”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday described violence in Ethiopia’s Tigray region as “ethnic cleansing” as he pressed for a prompt investigation, aid and the exit of Eritrean troops.
