NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) – Eritrean soldiers have systematically killed “many hundreds” of people, mostly men, in a massacre in the Ethiopian city of Axum in the Tigray region, Amnesty International said on Friday. The new report reflects the findings of an Associated Press story last week and quoted more than 40 witnesses.
As pressure on Ethiopia escalates following the deadliest massacre of the Tigray conflict, the prime minister’s office announced that ‘humanitarian agencies have now given unrestricted access to aid in the region’. It added that the government “welcomes international technical assistance to institute investigations (after alleged misuse), as well as inviting the potential to cooperate in joint investigations.”
And yet the government claims that the Amnesty report is based on ‘little information’, saying the human rights group should have visited the Tigray region. Amnesty said it had sought government permission in December and had never received a response.
“As you know, no independent human rights monitors have been allowed in the region since the conflict began,” spokesman Conor Fortune said in an email to the AP.
Most importantly, the head of the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, Daniel Bekele, has been informed by the government that Amnesty’s findings should be taken very seriously. The commission’s own preliminary findings “indicate the death of an as yet unknown number of civilians by Eritrean soldiers” in Axum, its statement said.
The Amnesty report describes the soldiers who shot down civilians as they fled, lined up men and shot them in the back, while taking ‘hundreds, if not thousands’ of men for beatings and refusing to allow the bereaved to bury the dead. .
Over a period of about 24 hours, ‘Eritrean soldiers deliberately shot civilians on the street and systematically conducted house-to-house investigations and carried out men and boys outside,’ reads the report released early Friday. “The massacre was carried out in retaliation for an earlier attack by a small number of local militants, along with locals armed with sticks and stones.”
The ‘mass execution’ of Axum civilians by Eritrean troops could amount to crimes against humanity, the report said, calling for an international inquiry led by the United Nations and full access to Tigray for human rights groups, journalists and humanitarian workers. The region has been largely cut off since fighting began in early November.
The federal government of Ethiopia denied the presence of soldiers from neighboring Eritrea, a longtime enemy of the leaders of the Tigray region, and the government of Eritrea was dismissed the AP story about the massacre at Axum as ‘outrageous lies’. Eritrean Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel said on Friday his country was “outraged and categorically rejected the insulting allegations in the Amnesty report”.
But even senior members of the interim government appointed by Ethiopia in Tigray acknowledged the Eritrean soldiers’ presence and the allegations of widespread looting and murder.
Ethiopia said the “alleged incident” in Axum “should 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 been killed in the conflict between Ethiopian and allied forces and that of the Tigray regional government, which has long dominated the Ethiopian government before Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took office in 2018. Humanitarian officials have warned a growing number of people could starve access to death, while improving, remains limited.
“Hostilities must stop immediately,” European Union head of foreign policy Josep Borrell said in a statement in response to the Amnesty International report, adding that “the level of suffering that civilians, including children, are suffering is.”
The presence of Eritrean soldiers in Tigray has caused concern. The United States has repeatedly urged Eritrea to withdraw its troops, citing credible reports of ‘serious’ human rights abuses. On Wednesday, he asked: “Does the Eritrean army have sufficient 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 had jointly taken control of the city, but the Eritreans carried out the killings and then conducted house-to-house raids for men and teenage boys.
Bodies were scattered in the streets after the events of November 28 and 29, witnesses said.
“The next day they did not allow us to choose the dead. “The Eritrean soldiers have said that you can not bury the dead until our dead soldiers are buried,” one woman told Amnesty International. While hospitals were looted or health workers fled, some witnesses said a number of people died due to their lack of wounds.
‘It took days to assemble the bodies and carry out the burials. “Most of the dead appear to have been buried on November 30, but witnesses said people found many additional bodies in the days that followed,” the new report said.
After Ethiopian soldiers obtained permission to bury the dead, witnesses said they feared the killings would resume at any moment, even as they piled corpses on horse-drawn carriages and took them to churches for burial, sometimes in mass graves.
The AP met with a deacon in one church, the Church of St. Mary of Zion, spoke who said he helped count the bodies, collected victims’ identity cards and helped with funerals. He believes about 800 people died in the city that weekend.
After being exposed for a day or more, the bodies began to rot, further traumatizing families and those who gathered to help.
The new report states that satellite images show new ‘disturbed ground’ next to churches.