NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) – The Eritrean soldiers’ pockets are ringing with stolen jewelery. Warebuig saw Zenebu trying to loot dresses and other clothes from houses in a city in the Tigray region of Ethiopia.
“They were focused on trying to take everything of value,” even diapers, said Zenebu, who arrived home in Colorado this month after being trapped in Tigray, where she visited her mother. Along the way, she said trucks were full of boxes aimed at places in Eritrea to deliver the looted goods.
Heartbreakingly worse, she said, Eritrean soldiers went house-to-house searching and killed Tigraian men and boys, some as young as 7, and then did not allow their funerals. “They will kill you because you try or even cry,” Zenebu told The Associated Press. She only uses her first name because family members live in Tigray.
Major unknowns continue in the deadly conflict, but details of the involvement of neighboring Eritrea, one of the world’s most mysterious countries, appear with testimonies by survivors and others. In thousands of estimates, the Eritrean soldiers fought on the side of Ethiopian forces. They are accused of targeting thousands of defenseless refugees from their own country, raping and intimidating locals – and now some are worried and refusing to go home.
Eritrea and Ethiopia recently concluded 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 almost 30 years and are now refugees since the fighting between Ethiopian and Tigray forces began in November, due to rising tensions about power.
Ethiopian government denies Eritreans are in Tigray, a position contradicted by an Ethiopian military commander who confirmed their presence last month. The US called Eritrea’s involvement a ‘serious development’, citing credible reports. Eritrean officials do not respond to questions.
Despite the denial, the Eritrean soldiers do not hide. They even attended meetings in which humanitarian workers negotiated access with Ethiopian authorities.
Now millions of Tigray residents, still largely cut off from the world, live in fear of the soldiers who inspire memories of the countries’ two-decade border war. The recent peace has revived cultural and family ties with Tigray, but Eritrea soon closed the border crossing.
“If Eritrea refuses to leave, the UN must give us protection before we perish as a people,” former Ethiopian Defense Minister Seye Abraha said in comments posted Sunday by a Tigray media agency.
A spokeswoman for Ethiopian Prime Minister Billene Seyoum did not respond to a request for discussion of Eritrean forces.
Since almost all Tigray journalists are blocked and access to humanitarian and communications links is limited, evidence reports give the clearest picture of the Eritreans.
They were first reported in northwest Tigray, which was one of the earliest battles. The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission calls on residents of the border town of Humera that the Eritreans participated in widespread looting that ’emptied food and grain storage’. This has contributed to the growing hunger among survivors.
The report by Zenebu, a 48-year-old health worker, is one of the most detailed that has come to light – and it comes from Tigray, an area that has been little heard so far.
She first saw the Eritrean soldiers in mid-December. She fled with others into the mountains as the fighting approached, leaving her mother, too fragile for the journey. Twelve days later she returned to the city of Hawzen and had to know if her mother had survived.
In the dark, she stumbled across bodies, including about 70 that she later realized she knew had been identified. The ground was littered with beer bottles, cigarettes and other rubbish, and ‘I could not see the difference between human and animal bodies.’ The stench of death was strong.
A neighborhood boy, just 12 years old, was recruited by soldiers to do messages and then killed.
“I saw his body,” Zenebu said. “They just threw him away.”
Her mother survived, her house was stripped of belongings.
People were killed because they had photos of Tigray leaders, even long ago, Zenebu said, and the photos were set on fire. While saying that some atrocities were carried out by Ethiopian forces and related fighters from the neighboring Amhara region, she recognizes the Eritreans by their cheeks and the dialect of the Tigrinya language.
“I was more sad and surprised to see the Eritreans doing this because I had a connection and spoke the same language,” Zenebu said. “I felt we shared more of the same struggle,” while others “do not know us like the Eritreans.”
Residents tried to survive as food supplies dwindled. Electricity for grinding grains was gone, and the medical supply ran out. “People are starving,” Zenebu said.
It was worse, she said, than in the 1980s, when famine and conflict were swept away by Tigray and images of hungry people in Ethiopia worldwide sounded the alarm and she fled to Sudan.
Then, ‘there was no house-to-house looting of civilians, the weapon of famine, the ruthless murder,’ she said. “It’s worse than before.”
Eventually, Zenubu manages to leave Hawzen and reach the capital Tigray, Mekele, after pretending to be a resident and fitting in with other people traveling there. She called her family in the US and cried hysterically.
“I just wanted to say I’m alive,” she said. Now she can not get to her mother.
Her account, like many, could not be verified until communication links with Tigray were fully restored – and even then, people in Ethiopia were worried that phone calls would be monitored.
But another person who escaped Hawzen and arrived in the U.S. this month told the AP that Eritrean soldiers were “everywhere” and that they had confirmed their murder and looting. He also identified them by their dialect.
“Same blood, same language,” he says, noting the close ties with Tigrayane. “I do not know why they killed.” He spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of his family members.
“We are investigating credible reports of a whole series of abuses by Eritrean forces in the middle of Tigray, including executions of civilians, widespread looting and damage to public and private property, including hospitals,” said Laetitia Bader, a researcher at Human Rights Watch. , said. immediate international inquiry ”and a UN-led inquiry.
Other reports come from the nearly 60,000 refugees who fled to Sudan.
“My five brothers and mother are in Axum” near the Eritrean border, a doctor among the refugees, Tewodros Tefera, told the AP. “People from Axum said that Eritrean forces killed many young men.”
“I do not know if my brothers are alive,” he said of his 25- to 35-year-old brothers. His calls do not go through.
A woman who is now in the US after leaving Axum, which only gave her first name Woinshet, cried when she told the AP that she believes it survived because its Eritrean soldiers passed her US passport instead of showed a local ID.
“There is no (military) camp in Axum, only monasteries,” she said, recalling bodies left in the streets. “Why are they there?”
Other survivors fled from the Eritrean soldiers to remote areas in Tigray and called to say they had been living on leaves and dried fruit for weeks.
“I do not know how people stay alive,” Tewodros said.