Leaders agreed on priority of working together to address conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray.
US President Joe Biden and Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan of United Arab Emirates discussed a range of issues, including Iran and the conflict in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, the White House said Tuesday.
The violence had broken out in northern Ethiopia’s Tigray region at the worst possible time for Abraha and his family. Their village of Mai Kadra was caught in the first known massacre of a grinding war that has killed thousands of ethnic Tigrayans like them.
Abraha pleaded with his wife, writhing from post-childbirth complications, to be silent, as any noise could bring gunmen to his door. His two young sons watched in fear.
War had broken out in northern Ethiopia’s Tigray region at the worst possible time for Abraha and his family. Their village of Mai Kadra was caught in the first known massacre of a grinding conflict that has killed thousands of ethnic Tigrayans like them.
“Look after my babies,” she said. “I’m going to die. I don’t have hope. I’m very sorry.”
Civilians massacred. Journalists arrested. People starving to death. Ethiopia’s government is under growing pressure to allow the world to see firsthand what has occurred in its embattled Tigray region as its Nobel Peace Prize-winning prime minister rejects “partisan interventions.”
That pressure is expected to spike this month as the United States chairs the United Nations Security Council and addresses the first major African crisis of the Biden administration. Millions of dollars in aid to Ethiopia, a key security ally in the region, are at stake.
Ethiopia on Wednesday said it is investigating “credible allegations of atrocities and human rights abuses” in its embattled Tigray region, including in the city of Axum, where The Associated Press and Amnesty International have separately documented a massacre of several hundred people.
The statement by Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s office comes days after Ethiopia referred to the killings in Axum as an “alleged incident,” and the country’s ambassador to Belgium told a webinar that “we suspect it’s a very, very crazy idea.”
Bodies with gunshot wounds lay in the streets for days in Ethiopia’s holiest city. At night, residents listened in horror as hyenas fed on the corpses of people they knew. But they were forbidden from burying their dead by the invading Eritrean soldiers.
Those memories haunt a deacon at the country’s most sacred Ethiopian Orthodox church in Axum, where local faithful believe the ancient Ark of the Covenant is housed. As Ethiopia’s Tigray region slowly resumes telephone service after three months of conflict, the deacon and other witnesses gave The Associated Press a detailed account of what might be its deadliest massacre.
Soldiers from neighboring Eritrea, a secretive nation and enemy of the former Tigray leaders, are deeply involved, though Ethiopia and Eritrea deny their presence. The European Union this week joined the United States in urging Eritrea to withdraw its forces, asserting they are “reportedly committing atrocities and exacerbating ethnic violence.”
“Many, many severe cases of malnutrition” are being reported in Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region, Red Cross officials said Wednesday, as 80% of Tigray’s 6 million people are unreachable in the fourth month of fighting and “emaciated” women and children fill displacement camps.
Reports of people already starving to death might just be a handful, but “after a month it will be in the thousands,” warned Ethiopian Red Cross president Ato Abera Tola. After two months, he said, it will be tens of thousands.
Fighting continues between Ethiopian and allied forces and those of the now-fugitive Tigray government that had dominated the country’s leadership for nearly 30 years.
Woman who gives brith while fleeing tigray speaks from the same refugee camp she was born at
