NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) – Soldiers from Eritrea systematically murdered “many hundreds”, mostly men, in a massacre in late November in the Ethiopian town of Axum in the Tigray region, Amnesty International said Friday. The new report echoed the findings of an Associated Press story last week and collected more than 40 witnesses.
As pressure increased on Ethiopia over what would be arguably the deadliest massacre of the Tigray conflict, the prime minister’s office announced that “humanitarian organizations have now been granted unfettered access to aid in the region.” It added that the government “welcomes international technical assistance to conduct the investigations (into alleged wrongdoing) as well as invites the opportunity to collaborate on joint investigations.”
And yet the government claimed that the Amnesty report relied on “scarce information,” and said the human rights organization should have visited the Tigray region. Amnesty said it had sought government approval in December and never received a response.
“As you know, independent human rights regulators have not been allowed in the region since the beginning of the conflict,” said spokesman Conor Fortune in an email to the AP.
Crucially, the head of the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, set up by the government, Daniel Bekele, says Amnesty’s findings “should be taken very seriously.” The commission’s own preliminary findings “point to the killing of an as yet unknown number of civilians by Eritrean soldiers” in Axum, its statement said.
The Amnesty report describes the soldiers shooting civilians as they fled, lining up and shooting men in the back, rounding up “hundreds if not thousands” of men for assault and refusing to bury those who mourned the dead.
Over a period of about 24 hours, Eritrean soldiers deliberately shot civilians in the streets and carried out systematic door-to-door searches, extrajudicially executing men and boys, ”the report released Friday. “The massacre was carried out in retaliation for an earlier attack by a small number of local militiamen, accompanied by local residents armed with sticks and stones.”
The “mass execution” of Axum civilians by Eritrean forces could amount to crimes against humanity, the report says, calling for a United Nations-led international investigation and full access to Tigray for human rights organizations, journalists and humanitarian workers. . The region has been largely cut off since the fighting started in early November.
Ethiopia’s federal government has denied the presence of soldiers from neighboring Eritrea, long an enemy of the now fugitive leaders of the Tigray region, and the Eritrea government has been fired the AP story of the Axum massacre as ‘scandalous lies’. Eritrea’s information minister, Yemane Gebremeskel, said on Friday that his country “is outraged and categorically rejects the ridiculous allegations” in the Amnesty report.
But even high-ranking members of the Ethiopian-appointed interim government in Tigray have acknowledged the presence of Eritrean soldiers and the accusations of widespread looting and massacres.
Ethiopia said the “alleged incident” in Axum “will need to be thoroughly investigated”.
And Ethiopia’s ambassador to Belgium, Hirut Zemene, told a webinar on Thursday that the alleged massacre in November was a “very unlikely scenario” and “we suspect it’s a very, very crazy idea.”
No one knows how many thousands of civilians have died in the conflict between Ethiopian and Allied forces and those of Tigray’s regional government, which dominated the Ethiopian government long before Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took office in 2018. Humanitarian officials have warned a growing number of people could starve to death as access, while improved, remains limited.
“Hostilities must cease immediately,” Josep Borrell, European Union foreign policy chief, said in a statement following the Amnesty International report, adding that “the level of suffering suffered by civilians, including children. , is terrible. “
The presence of Eritrean soldiers in Tigray has raised the alarm. The United States has repeatedly urged Eritrea to withdraw its soldiers and has cited credible reports of “serious” human rights violations. On Wednesday it asked, “Does the Eritrean military have enough control over its troops to prevent them from committing human rights violations?”
Witnesses to the Axum massacre told Amnesty International that Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers jointly took control of the city, but the Eritreans carried out the murders and then carried out house-to-house raids on men and teenage boys.
Bodies were littered on the streets after the events of November 28 and 29, witnesses said.
The next day they wouldn’t allow us to pick up the dead. The Eritrean soldiers said you cannot bury the dead until our dead soldiers are buried, ”a woman told Amnesty International. With hospitals looted or health workers fleeing, some witnesses said a number of people died from their injuries from lack of care.
“Collecting the corpses and carrying out the funerals took days. Most of the dead appear to have been buried on Nov. 30, but witnesses said people found many more bodies in the days that followed, ”the new report said.
After obtaining permission from Ethiopian soldiers to bury the dead, witnesses said they feared the killings would resume at any time, even if they piled bodies on horse-drawn carts and took them to churches for burial, sometimes in mass graves.
The AP spoke to a deacon at one church, the Church of St. Mary of Zion, who said he helped count the bodies, collected victims’ identity cards, and assisted with funerals. He believes that about 800 people died in the city that weekend.
After being exposed for a day or more, the bodies began to rot, traumatizing families and those gathering to help even more.
The new report says satellite images show newly ‘disturbed ground’ next to churches.