Tigray residents have told human rights groups and journalists of massacres, widespread sexual violence and indiscriminate killings of civilians by security forces in the region.
Aid workers, meanwhile, say Tigray’s health system has largely collapsed and warn of possible large-scale starvation.
On the night before Orthodox Christmas last month, Ethiopian priest Girmay Getahun donned a white robe and, Bible in hand, walked down the dirt road to his church to prepare for services.
Around midnight, heavily-armed fighters arrived in his village, in Ethiopia’s western Benishangul-Gumuz region, sending Girmay fleeing into the forest to hide for two days.
He returned to a horrifying sight: the corpses of his eight housemates, all day-labourers on teff and peanut farms, who had become the latest victims in a gruesome, perplexing string of attacks.
