“Reports indicate that atrocities were committed in the Tigray region,” Abiy wrote in a post on his Twitter account. “Regardless of the TPLF propaganda of exaggeration, any soldier responsible for the rape of our women and the looting of communities in the region will be held accountable because their mission is to protect,” he said, referring to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, the ruling party in the region, which is now leading a resistance against Ethiopian and Eritrean forces in the area.
CNN has released medical records and testimony of survivors, claiming that women were gang-raped, drugged and held hostage by soldiers.
High-level agencies from the UN agency issued a rare statement late Monday demanding that allegations of rape and other forms of sexual violence be investigated in the region.
“Amid a worsening humanitarian situation in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, there remain reports of indiscriminate and targeted attacks on civilians, including rape and other horrific forms of sexual violence. It must stop,” the statement said.
“Firstly, it is essential that an independent inquiry into conflict-related sexual violence be launched in Tigray, with the involvement of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.”
They called on all parties to the conflict “to fulfill their obligations under international humanitarian and human rights law; to ensure that their powers respect and protect civilian populations, particularly women and children, from all human rights violations; explicitly condemns all sexual violence, and takes action to bring offenders to justice where abuse takes place. ‘
A victim was left pregnant
A CNN team in Hamdayet, a Sudanese city on the Ethiopian border where thousands of Tigray refugees have gathered in recent months, spoke to several women who described being raped while fighting.
“He pushed me and said, ‘You Tigrayans have no history, you have no culture. I can do to you what I want and no one cares,'” one woman said of her attacker. She told CNN she is now pregnant.
In a separate case in Ethiopia, the woman’s vagina was filled with stones, nails and plastic, according to a video seen by CNN and testimony from one of the doctors who treated her.
According to the doctors CNN spoke to, almost all the women they treat tell similar stories of rape by Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers. The women said the troops were on a self-proclaimed retaliation and working with almost total impunity in the region.
‘The women who were raped say that the things they say to them when they are raped are that they need to change their identity – to amharise them or at least leave their Tigrinya status … and that they get there to clean them … to clean the bloodline, ‘said dr. Tedros Tefera said.
“It was virtually a genocide,” he added.
One of the survivors told Channel 4 News that she and five other women were raped by 30 Eritrean soldiers who took jokes and photos during the attack gang. She said she knew it was Eritrean troops because of their dialect and uniforms. She said she was able to return home to be raped again. When she tries to escape, she remembers being caught, injected with a drug, tied to a rock, robbed, stabbed and raped by soldiers for ten days.
On Monday, the Eritrean embassy of the United Kingdom and Ireland responded to CNN’s repeated requests for comment by denying allegations by Eritrean soldiers and denying that Eritrean troops were in Ethiopia.
CNN’s Schams Elwazer, Richard Roth, Sarah Dean and Angela Dewan contributed to this report.