NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) – Eritrean soldiers’ bags were ringing with stolen jewelry. Cautiously, Zenebu saw them try on dresses and other clothing looted from homes in a town in Ethiopia’s controversial Tigray region.
“They were focused on bringing everything of value,” even diapers, said Zenebu, who came home to Colorado this month after being incarcerated for weeks in Tigray, where she had gone to visit her mother. On the road, she said, trucks were packed with boxes addressed to places in Eritrea to deliver the looted goods.
Heartbreakingly worse, she said, Eritrean soldiers went from house to house looking for and murdering Tigrayan men and boys, some as young as 7 years old, and then denied their burial. “They would kill you for trying, or even crying,” Zenebu told The Associated Press, using only her first name since relatives stay in Tigray.
Vast unknowns remain in the deadly conflict, but details of the involvement of neighboring Eritrea, one of the world’s most secretive countries, emerge with testimony from survivors and others. It is estimated that thousands of Eritrean soldiers fought alongside Ethiopian forces. They are accused of targeting thousands of vulnerable people refugees from their own countries, raping and intimidating the locals – and now, some worry, refusing to go home.
Eritrea and Ethiopia 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 the Tigray leaders who have dominated the Ethiopian government for nearly 30 years and are now on the run since the fighting between Ethiopian and Tigray forces began in November, the result of mounting tensions. force of the majority.
Ethiopian government denies Eritreans are in Tigray, view contradicted by Ethiopian military commander who confirmed their presence last month. The US has called Eritrea’s involvement a “serious development”, citing credible reports. Eritrean officials do not respond to questions.
Despite the denials, the Eritrean soldiers are not hiding. They have even attended meetings where humanitarian workers negotiated access with the Ethiopian authorities.
Today, millions of Tigray residents, still largely cut off from the world, live in fear of the soldiers, who evoke memories of the countries’ two decades of border warfare. The recent peace has revived cultural and family ties with Tigray, but Eritrea soon closed the border crossings.
“If Eritrea refuses to leave, the UN must protect us before we perish as a people,” a former Ethiopian defense minister, Seye Abraha, said in comments posted Sunday through a Tigray media outlet.
A spokeswoman for the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Billene Seyoum, did not respond to a request to discuss the Eritrean armed forces.
With nearly all journalists blocked from Tigray and humanitarian access and communication links limited, witness statements provide the clearest picture to date of the Eritreans’ presence.
They were first reported in northwestern Tigray, where some of the first fighting took place. The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission has named residents of the border town of Humera who say the Eritreans participated in widespread looting that “emptied food and grain stores.” That has contributed to a growing hunger among survivors.
The report from Zenebu, a 48-year-old health worker, is one of the most detailed to come forward – and it came from downtown Tigray, an area that has so far been little heard of.
She saw the Eritrean soldiers for the first time in mid-December. She had fled into the mountains with others as the fighting approached, leaving her mother too weak for the journey. Twelve days later she returned to the town of Hawzen to find out if her mother survived.
In the dark, she said, she tripped over bodies, and around 70 later realized she knew when they were identified. The ground was littered with beer bottles, cigarettes and other waste, and “I couldn’t tell the difference between human and animal bodies.” The stench of death was strong.
A local boy, only 12, had been recruited by soldiers to run errands and then murdered.
“I’ve seen his body,” said Zenebu. “They just threw it away.”
Her mother had survived, her house had been stripped of possessions.
People had been killed for having pictures of Tigray leaders even long ago, Zenebu said, and the pictures were set on fire. While she said some atrocities were committed by Ethiopian forces and allied fighters from the neighboring Amhara region, she recognized the Eritreans by the markings on their cheeks and their dialect of the Tigrinya language.
“I was more heartbroken and astonished to see the Eritreans do that, because I felt a connection and spoke the same language,” said Zenebu. “I felt like we shared more of the same struggles,” while others “don’t know us like the Eritreans.”
Inhabitants tried to survive while food supplies dwindled. The electricity for grinding grains had run out and medical supplies were running out. “People are starving,” said Zenebu.
It was worse, she said, than in the 1980s, when famine and conflict raged through Tigray and images of starving people in Ethiopia raised global alarm and they fled to Sudan.
Then “there was no door-to-door looting of civilians, arming of hunger, the merciless murder,” she said. “It’s worse than before.”
Zenubu eventually managed to leave Hawzen and reach Tigray’s capital, Mekele, after pretending to be a resident and mingling with others who traveled there. She called her family in the US, crying hysterically.
“I just wanted to say that I was alive,” she said. Now she cannot reach her mother.
Her account, like many, cannot be verified until communications links with Tigray are fully restored – and even then, people in Ethiopia worry that phone calls are being tapped.
But another person who escaped from Hawzen and arrived in the US this month told the AP that Eritrean soldiers were “everywhere” and confirmed their murder and looting. He also identified them by their dialect.
“Same blood, same language,” he said, noting the close ties with Tigrayans. “I don’t know why they killed.” He spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of his relatives.
“We are investigating credible reports of a range of abuses by the Eritrean armed forces in central Tigray, including extrajudicial killings of civilians, widespread looting and damage to public and private property, including hospitals,” said Human Rights Watch investigator Laetitia Bader. insisting “immediate international scrutiny” and a UN-led investigation.
Other accounts come from the nearly 60,000 refugees who fled to Sudan.
“My five brothers and mother are in Axum,” near the Eritrean border, a refugee doctor, Tewodros Tefera, told the AP. “People from Axum said Eritrean troops killed many young men.”
“I don’t know if my brothers are still alive,” he said of his brothers, who are between 25 and 35 years old. His calls are not coming through.
A woman now in the US after she managed to leave Axum, who only gave her first name Woinshet, cried when she told the AP that she believes she survived because she showed Eritrean soldiers her US passport instead of a local ID.
“There is no (military) camp in Axum, only monasteries,” she said, recalling bodies left on the street. “Why are they there?”
Other survivors have fled Eritrean soldiers to remote areas in Tigray and called to say they have been living on leaves and dried fruit for weeks.
“I don’t know how people survive,” said Tewodros.