NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) – The pockets of Eritrean soldiers clinked with stolen jewelry. Zenebu watched them carefully, trying on dresses and other clothes stolen from houses in a town in the Tigray region of Ethiopia.
“They focused on trying to get everything worthwhile,” even diapers, said Zenebu, who arrived home in Colorado this month after weeks stuck in Tigray, where he had gone to visit his mother. On the way, she said, the trucks were full of boxes addressed to places in Eritrea for the delivery of the stolen goods.
In an extremely bad situation, she said, Eritrean soldiers went from house to house looking for and killing Tigrian men and boys, some up to 7 years old, and then did not allow their burial. “She would kill you because you tried or even cried,” Zenebu told The Associated Press, using only her first name because relatives remain in Tigray.
Huge unknowns persist in the deadly conflict, but details of the involvement of neighboring Eritrea, one of the most secretive countries in the world, come up with accounts of surviving witnesses and others. Estimated in thousands, Eritrean soldiers fought on the side of Ethiopian forces. They are accused of targeting thousands of vulnerable people refugees from their own country, raping and intimidating locals – and now some are worried, refusing to go home.
Eritrea and Ethiopia have recently made peace under Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for his efforts. But Eritrea remains an enemy of Tigray leaders who have dominated the Ethiopian government for nearly 30 years and are now on the run since fighting between Ethiopian forces and Tigray began in November, the result of growing tensions. over power.
Ethiopian government denies Eritreans in Tigray, a position contradicted by an Ethiopian military commander who confirmed their presence last month. The United States has called Eritrea’s involvement a “serious development,” citing credible reports. Eritrean officials do not answer questions.
Despite the denials, Eritrean soldiers do not hide. They even attended meetings in which humanitarian workers negotiated access with the Ethiopian authorities.
Now millions of Tigray residents, still largely out of the world, live in fear of soldiers, inspiring memories of the country’s two-decade-long border war. Recent peace has revived cultural and family ties with Tigray, but Eritrea soon closed border crossings.
“If Eritrea refuses to leave, the UN should give us protection before we perish as a people,” former Ethiopian Defense Minister Seye Abraha said in comments to Tigray media on Sunday.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Billene Seyoum’s spokesman did not respond to a request to discuss Eritrean forces.
With almost all journalists blocked by Tigray and limited humanitarian access and communications, eyewitness accounts provide the clearest picture of the Eritrean presence so far.
They were first reported in northwest Tigray, which saw some of the oldest fighting. Ethiopia’s human rights commission quotes residents of the border town of Humera as saying that Eritreans took part in robberies that “emptied food and grain depots”. This has contributed to an increase in hunger among survivors.
The account of Zenebu, a 48-year-old health worker, is one of the most detailed that has come out – and it came from the center of Tigray, an area little heard so far.
She first saw Eritrean soldiers in mid-December. She had fled with others to the mountains as the fighting approached, leaving behind her mother, too frail for the journey. Twelve days later she returned to the town of Hawzen, needing to know if her mother survived.
In the dark, she said, she stumbled over corpses, including around the age of 70 and later realized she knew how they were identified. The earth was strewn with beer bottles, cigarettes and other garbage and “I couldn’t tell the difference between human and animal bodies.” The stench of death was strong.
A neighborhood boy, only 12, had been recruited by soldiers to do errands and then killed.
“I saw his body,” Zenebu said. “They just threw it away.”
Her mother had survived, her house without property.
People had been killed because they had photos of Tigray leaders, even long ago, Zenebu said, and the photos were set on fire. While saying that some atrocities were committed by Ethiopian forces and Allied fighters in the neighboring Amhara region, she recognized the Eritreans by cheek marks and the Tigrinya dialect.
“I was more broken and more surprised to see Eritreans doing this because I felt a connection, speaking the same language,” Zenebu said. “I felt I shared more of the same struggle,” while others “do not know us as the Eritreans do.”
Residents tried to survive as food supplies declined. The electricity for grinding grains has disappeared and medical supplies have run out. “People are starving,” Zenebu said.
It was worse, she said, than in the 1980s, when famine and conflict swept through Tigray, and images of starving Ethiopians sounded a global alarm and he fled to Sudan.
Then, “there were no civilian robberies from house to house, arming hunger, ruthless killing,” she said. “It’s worse than before.”
Zenubu eventually managed to leave Hawzen and reach the capital of Tigray, Mekele, after pretending to be a resident and mingling with others traveling there. She called her family in the US, crying hysterically.
“I just wanted to say I’m alive,” she said. Now she can’t reach her mother.
Her account, like many others, cannot be verified until communication links with Tigray are completely restored – and even then, people in Ethiopia worry that phone calls are being monitored.
But another person who escaped Hawzen and arrived in the US this month told the AP that Eritrean soldiers are “everywhere” and have confirmed their killing and robbery. He also identified them by their dialect.
“The same blood, the same language,” he said, noting his close ties to the Tigers. “I don’t know why they killed him.” He spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of his relatives.
“We are investigating credible reports of a range of abuses by Eritrean forces in central Tigray, including extrajudicial executions of civilians, widespread robberies and damage to public and private property, including hospitals,” said Human Rights Watch researcher Laetitia Bader. , urging “immediate international control” and a UN-led investigation.
Other accounts come from the nearly 60,000 refugees who fled to Sudan.
“My five brothers and my mother are in Axum,” near the Eritrean border, a refugee doctor, Tewodros Tefera, told the AP. “People in Axum said Eritrean forces killed many young people.”
“I don’t know if my brothers are alive,” he said of his brothers, who are between 25 and 35 years old. His phone calls don’t go through.
A woman now in the US after she managed to leave Axum, who only gave her first name, Woinshet, cried while telling the AP that she thinks she survived because she showed the Eritrean soldiers her US passport instead of a local identity card.
“There is no (military) camp in Axum, only monasteries,” she said, recalling the bodies left on the streets. “Why am I there?”
Other survivors fled Eritrean soldiers in remote areas of Tigray and called to say they had been living on dried leaves and fruit for weeks.
“I don’t know how people stay alive,” Tewodros said.