NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) – Eritrean soldiers’ pockets tinkled with stolen jewelry. Cautiously, Zenebu watched them try on dresses and other clothes stolen from homes in a town 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 weeks in prison in Tigray, where she had gone to visit her mother. On the road, she said, the trucks were full of boxes addressed to locations in Eritrea for looted goods to be delivered.
Worse, she said, Eritrean soldiers went from house to house looking for and killing Tigrayan men and boys, some as young as 7, and then did not allow their burials. “They would kill him for trying, or even for crying,” Zenebu told the Associated Press, using only his first name because relatives remain in Tigray.
Huge unknowns persist in the deadly conflict, but details of the involvement of neighboring Eritrea, one of the world’s most secret countries, are emerging with reports from witnesses to survivors and others. Estimated by the thousands, Eritrean soldiers fought alongside Ethiopian forces. They are accused of targeting thousands of vulnerable people refugees from their own country, raping and intimidating residents – and now, some worry, refusing to return home.
Eritrea and Ethiopia recently made peace under the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Abiy Ahmed, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for your efforts. But Eritrea remains the enemy of the Tigray leaders who dominated the Ethiopian government for almost 30 years and are now fugitives since fighting began between Ethiopian and Tigray forces in November, as a result of growing tensions about power.
The Ethiopian government denies that the Eritreans are in Tigray, a stance contradicted by an Ethiopian military commander who confirmed his presence last month. The United States classified Eritrea’s involvement as a “serious development”, citing credible reports. Eritrean officials do not answer questions.
Despite the denials, Eritrean soldiers are not hiding. They even attended meetings at which humanitarian workers negotiated access with Ethiopian authorities.
Now, millions of Tigray residents, still largely isolated from the world, live in fear of the soldiers, who inspire memories of the countries’ two-decade frontier war. Recent peace has revived cultural and family ties with Tigray, but Eritrea soon closed border crossings.
“If Eritrea refuses to leave, the UN must give us protection before we die as a people,” former Ethiopian defense minister Seye Abraha said in comments posted on Sunday by a Tigray media outlet.
A spokeswoman for Ethiopian Prime Minister Billene Seyoum did not respond to a request to discuss Eritrean forces.
With almost all journalists blocked on Tigray and limited humanitarian access and communication links, witness reports give the clearest picture yet of the Eritreans’ presence.
They were first reported in northwestern Tigray, which saw some of the first fighting. The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission cites residents of the border city of Humera as saying that the Eritreans participated in widespread looting that “emptied the storage of food and grain”. This has contributed to the increase in hunger among the survivors.
The report by Zenebu, a 48-year-old health professional, is one of the most detailed that has emerged – and it came from downtown Tigray, an area little heard so far.
She saw Eritrean soldiers for the first time in mid-December. She had fled with others to the mountains as the fight approached, leaving her mother, too fragile for the journey, behind. Twelve days later, she returned to the city of Hawzen, needing to know if her mother had survived.
In the darkness, she said, she tripped over bodies, including about 70, she realized later that she knew when they were identified. The floor was covered with bottles of beer, cigarettes and other types of garbage, and “I didn’t know the difference between human and animal bodies”. The stench of death was strong.
A neighborhood boy, just 12, had been recruited by soldiers to run errands and then killed.
“I saw his body,” said Zenebu. “They just threw it away.”
Her mother had survived, her home stripped of possessions.
People were killed for having pictures of Tigray leaders, even the old ones, Zenebu said, and the photos were set on fire. Although she said that some atrocities were committed by Ethiopian forces and allied fighters from the neighboring region of Amhara, she recognized the Eritreans by marks on their cheeks and their dialect of the Tigris language.
“I was more heartbroken and surprised to see the Eritreans doing this because I felt a connection, speaking the same language,” said Zenebu. “I felt that we share more of the same struggle”, while others “don’t know us like the Eritreans”.
Residents tried to survive while food supplies dwindled. The electricity to grind grain has run out and medical supplies run out. “People are starving,” said Zenebu.
It was worse, she said, than in the 1980s, when famine and conflict swept through Tigray and images of hungry people in Ethiopia brought the global alarm and she fled to Sudan.
So, “there was no looting of civilians from house to house, armament of hunger, merciless killing,” she said. “It’s worse than before.”
Zenubu finally managed to leave Hawzen and reach Tigray’s capital, Mekele, after pretending to be a resident and mingling with others who traveled there. She called her family in the United States, crying hysterically.
“I just wanted to say that I was alive,” she said. Now she is unable to speak to her mother.
Your account, like many, cannot be verified until the communication links with Tigray are fully restored – and yet, people in Ethiopia fear that the calls will be monitored.
But another person who escaped from Hawzen and arrived in the United States this month told the AP that Eritrean soldiers were “everywhere” and confirmed his murders and looting. He also identified them by their dialect.
“Same blood, same tongue,” he said, observing the close ties to the Tigrayans. “I don’t know why they killed.” He spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of his relatives.
“We are investigating credible reports of a whole series of abuses by Eritrean forces in central Tigray, including extrajudicial executions of civilians, widespread looting and damage to public and private property, including hospitals,” said researcher Laetitia Bader, from Human Rights Watch, “immediate international scrutiny” and a UN-led investigation.
Other reports come from almost 60,000 refugees who fled to Sudan.
“My five brothers and my mother are in Axum,” near the border with Eritrea, a refugee doctor, Tewodros Tefera, told the AP. “People from Axum said that Eritrean forces killed many young people.”
“I don’t know if my brothers are alive,” he said of his brothers, who are between 25 and 35 years old. Your calls don’t answer.
A woman now in the United States, after successfully leaving Axum, who provided only her first name, Woinshet, cried when she told the AP that she believes she survived because she showed Eritrean soldiers her American passport instead of a local identity.
“There is no (military) camp in Axum, only monasteries,” she said, recalling bodies left on the streets. “Why are they there?”
Other survivors fled Eritrean soldiers to remote areas in Tigray and called to say they have been living on dried leaves and fruits for weeks.
“I don’t know how people are surviving,” said Tewodros.