ADDIS ABEBA – “We are horrified by the continuing violence in Tigray.” Thus begins the testimony of the killing of four civilians of the head of Doctors Without Borders for the emergency in Tigray, Karline Kleijer. “On Tuesday 23 March at least four men were dragged out of public buses and executed in the street by soldiers in front of some MSF staff members who were there. The accident occurred on the road from Mekele to Adigrat, which was also traveled that day by a well-recognizable MSF vehicle with a team of 3 people on board. On the way, they came across what appeared to be the result of an ambush on an Ethiopian military convoy by an armed group. There were soldiers wounded and killed and the military vehicles were still on fire “.
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At that point, says the manager, the Ethiopian soldiers stopped their vehicle and two public minibuses, forcing the passengers to get off. The men would be killed shortly after. “MSF operators were allowed to leave the place, but they saw the bodies of people killed on the side of the road.”
MSF’s dramatic story adds to the war crimes reports collected by Amnesty Internation on the spot, and by those of Human Rights Watch. Those responsible would be both the soldiers of the Ethiopian federal army and the Eritreans who entered the country to help Addis Ababa “restore the law in Tigray.” If, since the beginning of the offensive (4 months ago), the premier and Nobel Peace Prize winner Abiy Ahmed denied the intervention of Asmara, last Tuesday instead, during a question in Parliament, he confirmed it for the first time publicly .
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In his speech Ahmed stated that “the Eritrean people and government did a lasting favor to our soldiers” during the conflict, adding however that “any harm that was done to our people was unacceptable”. “We do not accept it not because it is the Eritrean army, we would not accept it even if it were our soldiers. The military campaign was against our enemies clearly targeted, not against the people. We have discussed it four or five times with the government. Eritrean “, said the premier.
Abiy Ahmed assured that the military held responsible for committing atrocities during the offensive will be prosecuted and brought to justice. “Regardless of the exaggerated propaganda of the TPLF (People’s Liberation Front of Tigray), any military man responsible for the rape of our women and the looting of communities in the region will be held responsible.”
The Ethiopian Commission for Human Rights (Ehrc) also denounced the killings of civilians at the hands of Eritrean troops in the city of Axum, about 200 kilometers north of the capital Makallè. “Preliminary data – reads a tweet – made it possible to bring to light serious abuses of human rights and that over one hundred civilians were killed by Eritrean soldiers between 28 and 29 November”.
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