NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) – Eritrean soldiers have systematically killed “many hundreds” of them, mostly men, in a massacre in late November in the Ethiopian town of Axum in the Tigray region, Amnesty International said on Friday. The new report echoed the findings of an Associated Press story last week and cited more than 40 witnesses.
As pressure on Ethiopia has risen to what could be the deadliest massacre in the Tigray conflict, the prime minister’s office said “humanitarian agencies have now been given unhindered access to aid in the region.” He added that the government “welcomes international technical assistance for conducting investigations (on alleged abuses), and invites the potential to cooperate in joint investigations.”
And yet, the government claimed that Amnesty’s report was based on “little information” and said the human rights group should have visited the Tigray region. Amnesty said it applied for government permission in December and never received a response.
“As you know, no independent human rights monitoring has been allowed in the region since the conflict began,” spokesman Conor Fortune said in an email to the PA.
Crucially, the head of the government’s Ethiopian human rights commission, Daniel Bekele, says Amnesty’s findings “should be taken very seriously”. The Commission’s preliminary findings “indicate the killing of an as yet unknown number of civilians by Eritrean soldiers” in Axum, according to its statement.
The Amnesty report describes soldiers shooting civilians as they fled, lining up men and shooting them in the back, rounding up “hundreds, if not thousands” of men for beatings and refusing to allow the bereaved to bury the dead.
For a period of about 24 hours, “Eritrean soldiers deliberately shot civilians in the street and carried out systematic house-to-house searches, extrajudicially executing men and boys,” the report said early Friday. “The massacre was carried out in retaliation for a previous attack by a small number of local militiamen, who were joined by residents armed with sticks and stones.”
The “mass execution” of Axum civilians by Eritrean troops could rise to crimes against humanity, the report said, and calls for a UN-led international inquiry and full access to Tigray for human rights groups, journalists and humanitarian workers. The region has been largely disrupted since fighting began in early November.
The Ethiopian federal government has denied the presence of soldiers from neighboring Eritrea, long hostile to the now fugitive leaders of the Tigray region, and the Eritrean government has been fired. the AP’s story of the Axum massacre as “outrageous lies.” Eritrean Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel said on Friday that his country “is outraged and categorically rejects the absurd allegations” in the Amnesty report.
But even senior members of the Ethiopian-appointed interim government in Tigray have acknowledged the presence of Eritrean soldiers and allegations of robbery and widespread killings.
Ethiopia said the “alleged incident” in Axum “will have to be thoroughly investigated.”
Ethiopia’s ambassador to Belgium, Hirut Zemene, also told a webinar on Thursday that the alleged November massacre was a “very unlikely scenario” and “we suspect it’s a very, very crazy idea.”
No one knows how many thousands of civilians were killed in the conflict between Ethiopian and allied forces and those of the Tigray regional government, which had long dominated the Ethiopian government before Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took office in 2018. Humanitarian officials have warned that a increase the number of people may die of starvation death, because access, while improving, remains restricted.
“Hostilities must end immediately,” European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said in a statement in response to Amnesty International’s report, adding that “the level of suffering suffered by civilians, including children, is appalling.”
The presence of Eritrean soldiers in Tigray brought some alarm. The United States has repeatedly called on Eritrea to withdraw its troops and cited credible reports of “serious” human rights abuses. On Wednesday, he asked: “Does the Eritrean army have enough control over its troops to prevent them from committing human rights abuses?”
Witnesses to the Axum massacre told Amnesty International that Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers had taken control of the city together, but Eritreans committed the crimes and then carried out house-to-house raids on men and teenagers.
The bodies were left scattered on the streets after the events of November 28 and 29, witnesses said.
“The next day, they did not allow us to choose the dead. Eritrean soldiers have said they cannot bury the dead until our dead soldiers are buried, “a woman told Amnesty International. With looted hospitals or runaway health workers, some witnesses said a number of people died from their injuries due to lack of care.
“Gathering the bodies and carrying out the funerals took days. Most of the dead appear to have been buried on November 30, but witnesses said people found many additional bodies in the coming days, “the new report said.
After obtaining permission from Ethiopian soldiers to bury the dead, witnesses said they feared the killings would be resumed at any time, even though they piled corpses on horse-drawn carts and took them to churches for burial, sometimes in graves. common.
The AP spoke with a deacon at a church, St. Mary of Zion Church, who said he helped count the bodies, collected the victims’ ID cards and attended funerals. He believes about 800 people were killed that weekend around the city.
After being exposed for a day or more, the bodies began to rot, further traumatizing families and those who gathered to help.
The new report says satellite imagery shows “disturbed ground” recently next to churches.