NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) – The Eritrea government dismisses a story from The Associated Press as “scandalous lies” in which witnesses describe a massacre of hundreds of people by Eritrean soldiers in the Tigray region of Ethiopia.
Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel criticized Thursday’s story of the massacre in the holy city of Axum in Ethiopia in a series of Twitter posts on Friday.
“Relevant Ethiopian institutions had long established the total fallacy of the story,” he said. Neighboring Ethiopia has repeatedly denied the presence of Eritrean soldiers in the Tigray region, which has been largely cut off from the world since fighting began in November between Ethiopian and Allied forces and those of Tigray.
Gebremeskel has not responded to AP inquiries during the months-long Tigray conflict,
The government of Eritrea has not confirmed the presence of thousands of soldiers reportedly in Tigray.
Witnesses from various communities in Tigray have charged them with large-scale looting, massacres and sexual assault. The Tigray region borders Eritrea, and witnesses have described seeing truckloads of loot passing by on their way to the country.
Thursday’s story quoted witnesses who said Eritrean soldiers attacked and killed civilians in the streets and churches of Axum, then prevented some people from burying the bodies. A church deacon said he believes that about 800 people died in a single weekend at the end of November, and that a total of thousands died in Axum.
One of the world’s most secretive nations, Eritrea has long been an enemy of the now fugitive former leaders of the Tigray region, who have dominated the Ethiopian government for nearly three decades. At the time, Ethiopia and Eritrea fought a two-decade border war.
That conflict ended in 2018 when new Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed made peace with Eritrea, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019. Now, some critics of the Tigray conflict are accusing Abiy of collaborating with longtime Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki to target the region.
Nobody knows how many thousands of civilians have died.
The Ethiopian Red Cross warned this month that without improved humanitarian access to a region where 80% of the population of 6 million is still unreachable, thousands could starve after a month.