NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) – Eritrean soldiers systematically killed “many hundreds” of people, the vast majority of whom were men, in a massacre in late November in the Ethiopian city of Axum in the Tigray region, Amnesty International said on Friday. The new report echoed the findings of an Associated Press story last week and cited more than 40 witnesses.
As pressure on Ethiopia increased over what could be the deadliest massacre in the Tigray conflict, the prime minister’s office announced that “humanitarian agencies now have unrestricted access to aid in the region”. He added that the government “welcomes international technical assistance to carry out investigations (on alleged abuses), as well as invites potential collaboration in joint investigations”.
Even so, the government claimed that the Amnesty report was based on “sparse information” and said the human rights group should have visited the Tigray region. Amnesty said it requested permission from the government in December and never received a response.
“As you know, no independent human rights monitor has been allowed in the region since the start of the conflict,” spokesman Conor Fortune told the AP via email.
Crucially, the head of the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, established by the government, Daniel Bekele, says that Amnesty’s conclusions “must 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, the statement said.
The Amnesty report describes soldiers shooting civilians as they fled, lining up men and shooting in the back, arresting “hundreds, if not thousands” of men for beatings and refusing to allow the mourners to bury the dead.
Over a period of about 24 hours, “Eritrean soldiers deliberately shot civilians in the streets and carried out systematic house-to-house searches, executing men and boys out of court,” says the report released on Friday morning. “The massacre was carried out in retaliation for an earlier attack by a small number of local militiamen, to which were added local residents armed with sticks and stones.”
The “mass execution” of Axum civilians by Eritrean troops could represent crimes against humanity, says the report, and calls for an international investigation led by the United Nations and full access to Tigray for human rights groups, journalists and workers humanitarian. The region has been practically isolated since the fighting began in early November.
The federal government of Ethiopia has denied the presence of soldiers from neighboring Eritrea, long an enemy of the now fugitive leaders in the Tigray region, and the Eritrean government has dismissed the AP story about the Axum massacre as “outrageous lies”. Eritrean Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel said on Friday that his country “is outraged and categorically rejects the absurd charges” in the Amnesty report.
But even senior members of the interim government appointed by Ethiopia in Tigray recognized the presence of Eritrean soldiers and allegations of widespread looting and murder.
Ethiopia said the “alleged incident” in Axum “will have to be investigated thoroughly”.
And Ethiopia’s ambassador to Belgium, Hirut Zemene, said in a webinar on Thursday that the alleged massacre in November was a “highly unlikely scenario” and “we suspect it is a very, very crazy idea”.
No one knows how many thousands of civilians were killed in the conflict between the Ethiopian and Allied forces and those of the Tigray regional government, which had long dominated the Ethiopian government before Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took office in 2018. Humanitarian officials have warned that an increasing number of people may be starving death, as access, while improving, remains restricted.
“Hostilities must cease immediately,” said European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell in a statement in response to Amnesty International’s report, adding that “the level of suffering endured by civilians, including children, is terrible”.
The presence of Eritrean soldiers in Tigray caused some alarm. The United States has repeatedly urged Eritrea to withdraw its soldiers and has cited credible reports of “serious” human rights abuses. On Wednesday, he asked: “Do Eritrean military personnel have sufficient control over their troops to prevent them from committing human rights abuses?”
Witnesses to the Axum massacre told Amnesty International that Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers jointly took control of the city, but the Eritreans carried out the killings and then conducted house-to-house searches for men and adolescents.
Bodies were left on the streets after the events of 28 and 29 November, witnesses said.
“The next day, they did not allow us to choose the dead. Eritrean soldiers said that one cannot bury the dead before our dead soldiers are buried, ”a woman told Amnesty International. With hospitals looted or the flight of health professionals, some witnesses said that several people died from injuries due to lack of care.
“It took days to collect the bodies and hold funerals. 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, ”says the new report.
After obtaining permission from Ethiopian soldiers to bury the dead, witnesses said they feared the killings would resume at any time, even when they piled up bodies in horse-drawn carts and took them to churches for burial, sometimes in mass graves.
The AP talked to a deacon of a church, the Church of Santa Maria de Sião, who said he helped count the bodies, collected the victims’ identity cards and helped with the burials. He believes that about 800 people were killed that weekend in the city.
After being exposed for a day or more, the bodies began to rot, further traumatizing families and those who came together to help.
The new report says that satellite images show “disturbed soil” recently alongside churches.