Amnesty: Eritrean troops’ massacre of hundreds of Axum civilians may amount to crime against humanity

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Amnesty International | 26 February 2021 |  

Amnesty International interviewed 41 survivors and witnesses to mass killings in November

  • Troops carried out extrajudicial executions, indiscriminate shelling and widespread looting
  • Satellite imagery analysis shows evidence consistent with new burial sites

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Eritrean troops fighting in Ethiopia’s Tigray state systematically killed hundreds of unarmed civilians in the northern city of Axum on 28-29 November 2020, opening fire in the streets and conducting house-to-house raids in a massacre that may amount to a crime against humanity, Amnesty International said today in a new report.

Amnesty International spoke to 41 survivors and witnesses – including in-person interviews with recently arrived refugees in eastern Sudan and phone interviews with people in Axum – as well as 20 others with knowledge of the events. They consistently described extrajudicial executions, indiscriminate shelling and widespread looting after Ethiopian and Eritrean troops led an offensive to take control of the city amid the conflict with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) in mid-November.

Satellite imagery analysis by the organization’s Crisis Evidence Lab corroborates reports of indiscriminate shelling and mass looting, as well as identifies signs of new mass burials near two of the city’s churches.

“The evidence is compelling and points to a chilling conclusion. Ethiopian and Eritrean troops carried out multiple war crimes in their offensive to take control of Axum. Above and beyond that, Eritrean troops went on a rampage and systematically killed hundreds of civilians in cold blood, which appears to constitute crimes against humanity,” said Deprose Muchena, Amnesty International’s Director for East and Southern Africa.

This atrocity ranks among the worst documented so far in this conflict. Besides the soaring death toll, Axum’s residents were plunged into days of collective trauma amid violence, mourning and mass burials.

Deprose Muchena, Amnesty International’s Director for East and Southern Africa

“This atrocity ranks among the worst documented so far in this conflict. Besides the soaring death toll, Axum’s residents were plunged into days of collective trauma amid violence, mourning and mass burials.”

The mass killings came just before the annual celebration at Axum Tsion Mariam, a major Ethiopian Orthodox Christian festival on 30 November, compounding the trauma by casting a pall over an annual event that typically draws many pilgrims and tourists to the sacred city.

Large-scale military offensive

Overview image of damage & debris around the city of Axum, in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, following an offensive by Ethiopian and Eritrean forces in November 2020. Image: Google © 2021 Maxar Technologies

On 19 November 2020, Ethiopian and Eritrean military forces took control of Axum in a large-scale offensive, killing and displacing civilians with indiscriminate shelling and shooting.

In the nine days that followed, the Eritrean military engaged in widespread looting of civilian property and extrajudicial executions.

Witnesses could easily identify the Eritrean forces. They drove vehicles with Eritrean license plates, wore distinctive camouflage and footwear used by the Eritrean army and spoke Arabic or a dialect of Tigrinya not spoken in Ethiopia. Some bore the ritual facial scars of the Ben Amir, an ethnic group absent from Ethiopia. Finally, some of the soldiers made no secret of their identity; they openly told residents they were Eritrean.

‘All we could see were dead bodies and people crying’

According to witnesses, the Eritrean troops unleashed the worst of the violence on 28-29 November. The onslaught came directly after a small band of pro-TPLF militiamen attacked the soldiers’ base on Mai Koho mountain on the morning of 28 November. The militiamen were armed with rifles and supported by residents brandishing improvised weapons, including sticks, knives and stones.

Sustained gunfire can be heard ringing out across the city in a video recorded early that day from several locations at the bottom of the mountain.

A 22-year-old man who wanted to bring food to the militia told Amnesty International: “The Eritrean soldiers were trained but the young residents didn’t even know how to shoot… a lot of the [local] fighters started running away and dropped their weapons. The Eritrean soldiers came into the city and started killing randomly.”

Survivors and witnesses said Eritrean forces deliberately and wantonly shot at civilians from about 4pm onwards on 28 November.

According to residents, the victims carried no weapons and many were running away from the soldiers when they were shot. One man who hid in an unfinished building said he saw a group of six Eritrean soldiers kill a neighbour with a vehicle-mounted heavy machine-gun on the street near the Mana Hotel: “He was standing. I think he was confused. They were probably around 10 metres from him. They shot him in the head.”

I saw a lot of people dead on the street. Even my uncle’s family. Six of his family members were killed. So many people were killed.

21-year-old male resident of Axum

A 21-year-old male resident said: “I saw a lot of people dead on the street. Even my uncle’s family. Six of his family members were killed. So many people were killed.”

The killings left Axum’s streets and cobblestone plazas strewn with bodies. One man who had run out of the city returned at night after the shooting stopped. “All we could see on the streets were dead bodies and people crying,” he said.

On 29 November, Eritrean soldiers shot at anyone who tried to move the bodies of those killed.

The soldiers also continued to carry out house-to-house raids, hunting down and killing adult men, as well as some teenage boys and a smaller number of women. One man said he watched through his window and saw six men killed in the street outside his house on 29 November. He said the soldiers lined them up and shot from behind, using a light-machine gun to kill several at a time with a single bullet.

Interviewees named scores of people they knew who were killed, and Amnesty International has collected the names of more than 240 of the victims. The organization has been unable to independently verify the overall death toll, but consistent witness testimonies and corroborating evidence make it plausible that hundreds of residents were killed.

Burying the dead

Most of the burials took place on 30 November, but the process of collecting and burying the bodies lasted several days.

Many residents said they volunteered to move the bodies on carts, in batches of five to 10 at a time; one said he transported 45 bodies. Residents estimate that several hundred people were buried in the aftermath of the massacre, and they attended funerals at several churches where scores were buried. Hundreds were buried at the largest funeral, held at the complex that includes the Arba’etu Ensessa church and the Axum Tsion St Mariam Church.

Amnesty International’s Crisis Evidence Lab geolocated a video showing people carrying a dead man on a stretcher in Da’Ero Ela Plaza (14.129918, 38.717113), towards Arba’etu Ensessa church. High-resolution satellite imagery from 13 December shows disturbed earth consistent with recent graves around the Arba’etu Ensessa and the Abune Aregawi churches.

Intimidation and looting

In the days following the burials, the Eritrean army rounded up hundreds of residents in different parts of the city. They beat some of the men, threatening them with a new round of revenge killings if they resisted.

Axum residents witnessed a surge in the Eritrean army’s looting during this period, targeting stores, public buildings including a hospital, and private homes. Luxury goods and vehicles were widely looted, as well as medication, furniture, household items, food, and drink.

International humanitarian law (the laws of war) prohibits deliberate targeting of civilians, indiscriminate attacks, and pillage (looting). Violations of these rules constitute war crimes. Unlawful killings that form part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population are crimes against humanity.

“As a matter of urgency, there must be a UN-led investigation into the grave violations in Axum. Those suspected of responsibility for war crimes or crimes against humanity must be prosecuted in fair trials and victims and their families must receive full reparation,” said Deprose Muchena.“We repeat our call on the Ethiopian government to grant full and unimpeded access across Tigray for humanitarian, human rights, and media organizations.”

CNN: Massacre in the mountains

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CNN | They thought they’d be safe at a church. Then the soldiers arrived

By Bethlehem Feleke, Eliza Mackintosh, Gianluca Mezzofiore and Katie Polglase | February 27, 2021 

All of the witnesses to this massacre have been given pseudonyms at their request due to fears of retribution.

Abraham began burying the bodies in the morning and didn’t stop until nightfall.

The corpses, some dressed in white church robes drenched in blood, were scattered in arid fields, scrubby farmlands and a dry riverbed. Others had been shot on their doorsteps with their hands bound with belts. Among the dead were priests, old men, women, entire families and a group of more than 20 Sunday school children, some as young as 14, according to eyewitnesses, parents and their teacher.

Abraham recognized some of the children immediately. They were from his town in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, Edaga Hamus, and had also fled fighting there two weeks earlier. As clashes raged, Abraham and his family, along with hundreds of other displaced people, escaped to Dengelat, a nearby village in a craggy valley ringed by steep, rust-colored cliffs. They sought shelter at Maryam Dengelat, a historic monastery complex famed for a centuries-old, rock-hewn church.

On November 30, they were joined by scores of religious pilgrims for the Orthodox festival of Tsion Maryam, an annual feast to mark the day Ethiopians believe the Ark of the Covenant was brought to the country from Jerusalem. The holy day was a welcome respite from weeks of violence, but it would not last.

A group of Eritrean soldiers opened fire on Maryam Dengelat church while hundreds of congregants were celebrating mass, eyewitnesses say. People tried to flee on foot, scrambling up cliff paths to neighboring villages. The troops followed, spraying the mountainside with bullets.

A CNN investigation drawing on interviews with 12 eyewitnesses, more than 20 relatives of the survivors and photographic evidence sheds light on what happened next.

The soldiers went door to door, dragging people from their homes. Mothers were forced to tie up their sons. A pregnant woman was shot, her husband killed. Some of the survivors hid under the bodies of the dead.

The mayhem continued for three days, with soldiers slaughtering local residents, displaced people and pilgrims. Finally, on December 2, the soldiers allowed informal burials to take place, but threatened to kill anyone they saw mourning. Abraham volunteered.

Under their watchful eyes, he held back tears as he sorted through the bodies of children and teenagers, collecting identity cards from pockets and making meticulous notes about their clothing or hairstyle. Some were completely unrecognizable, having been shot in the face, Abraham said.

Then he covered their bodies with earth and thorny tree branches, praying that they wouldn’t be washed away, or carried off by prowling hyenas and circling vultures. Finally he placed their shoes on top of the burial mounds, so he could return with their parents to identify them.

One was Yohannes Yosef, who was just 15.

“Their hands were tied … young children … we saw them everywhere. There was an elderly man who had been killed on the road, an 80-something-year-old man. And the young kids they killed on the street in the open. I’ve never seen a massacre like this and I don’t want to [again],” Abraham said.

“We only survived by the grace of God.”

Abraham said he buried more than 50 people that day, but estimates more than 100 died in the assault.

They’re among thousands of civilians believed to have been killed since November, when Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for resolving a long-running conflict with neighboring Eritrea, launched a major military operation against the political party that governs the Tigray region. He accused the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which ruled Ethiopia for nearly three decades before Abiy took office in 2018, of attacking a government military base and trying to steal weapons. The TPLF denies the claim.

The conflict is the culmination of escalating tensions between the two sides, and the most dire of several recent ethno-nationalist clashes in Africa’s second-most populous country.

After seizing control of Tigray’s main cities in late November, Abiy declared victory and maintained that no civilians were harmed in the offensive. Abiy has also denied that soldiers from Eritrea crossed into Tigray to support Ethiopian forces.

But the fighting has raged on in rural and mountainous areas where the TPLF and its armed supporters are reportedly hiding out, resisting Abiy’s drive to consolidate power. The violence has spilled over into local communities, catching civilians in the crossfire and triggering what the United Nations refugee agency has called the worst flight of refugees from the region in two decades.

The UN special adviser on genocide prevention said in early February that the organization had received multiple reports of “extrajudicial killings, sexual violence, looting, mass executions and impeded humanitarian access.”

Many of those abuses have been blamed on Eritrean soldiers, whose presence on the ground suggests that Abiy’s much-lauded peace deal with Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki set the stage for the two sides to wage war against the TPLF — their mutual enemy.

The US State Department, in a statement to CNN, called for Eritrean forces to be “withdrawn from Tigray immediately,” citing credible reports of their involvement in “deeply troubling conduct.” In response to CNN’s findings, the spokesperson said “reports of a massacre at Maryam Dengelat are gravely concerning and demand an independent investigation.”

Ethiopia responded to CNN’s request for comment with a statement that did not directly address the attack in Dengelat. The government said it would “continue bringing all perpetrators to justice following thorough investigations into alleged crimes in the region,” but gave no details about those investigations.

“They were taking them barefoot and killing them in front of their mothers” Rahwa

CNN has reached out for comment to Eritrea, which has yet to respond. On Friday, the government vehemently denied its soldiers had committed atrocities during another massacre in Tigray reported by Amnesty International.

The TPLF said in a statement to CNN that its forces were nowhere near Dengelat at the time of the massacre. It rejected that the victims could have been mistaken for being TPLF and called for a UN investigation to hold all sides accountable for atrocities committed during the conflict.

Still, the situation inside the country remains opaque. Ethiopia’s government has severely restricted access to journalists and prevented most aid from reaching areas beyond the government’s control, making it challenging to verify accounts from survivors. And an intermittent communications blackout during the fighting has effectively blocked the war from the world’s eyes.

Now that curtain is being pulled back, as witnesses fleeing parts of Tigray reach internet access and phone lines are restored. They detail a disastrous conflict that has given rise to ethnic violence, including attacks on churches and mosques.

For months, rumors spread of a grisly assault on an Orthodox church in Dengelat. A list of the dead began circulating on social media in early December, shared among the Tigrayan diaspora. Then photos of the deceased, including young children, started cropping up online.

Through a network of activists and relatives, CNN tracked down eyewitnesses to the attack. In countless phone calls — many disconnected and dropped — Abraham and others provided the most detailed account of the deadly massacre to date.

Eyewitnesses said that the festival started much as it had any other year. Footage of the celebrations from 2019 shows priests dressed in white ceremonial robes and crowns, carrying crosses aloft, leading hundreds of people in prayer at Maryam Dengelat church. The faithful sang, danced and ululated in unison.

As prayers concluded in the early hours of November 30, Abraham looked out from the hilltop where the church is perched to see troops arriving by foot, followed by more soldiers in trucks. At first, they were peaceful, he said. They were invited to eat, and rested under the shade of a tree grove.

But, as congregants were celebrating mass around midday, shelling and gunfire erupted, sending people fleeing up mountain paths and into nearby homes.

Desta, who helped with preparations for the festival, said he was at the church when troops arrived at the village entrance, blocking off the road and firing shots. He heard people screaming and fled, running up Ziqallay mountainside. From the rocky plateau he surveyed the chaos playing out below.

We could see people running here and there … [the soldiers] were killing everyone who was coming from the church,” Desta said.

Eight eyewitnesses said they could tell the troops were Eritrean, based on their uniforms and dialect. Some speculated that soldiers were meting out revenge by targeting young men, assuming they were members of the TPLF forces or allied local militias. But Abraham and others maintained there were no militia in Dengelat or the church.

Marta, who was visiting Dengelat for the holiday, says she left the church with her husband Biniam after morning prayers. As the newlyweds walked back to their relative’s home, a stream of people began sprinting up the hill, shouting that soldiers were rounding people up in the village.

She recalled the horrifying moment soldiers arrived at their house, shooting into the compound and calling out: “Come out, come out you b*tches.” Marta said they went outside holding their identity cards aloft, saying “we’re civilians.” But the troops opened fire anyway, hitting Biniam, his sister and several others.

“I was holding Bini, he wasn’t dead … I thought he was going to survive, but he died [in my arms].

The couple had just been married in October. Marta found out after the massacre that she was pregnant.

After the soldiers left, Marta, who said she was shot in the hand, helped drag the seven bodies inside, so that the hyenas wouldn’t eat them. “We slept near the bodies … and we couldn’t bury them because they [the soldiers] were still there,” she said.

Marta and other eyewitnesses described soldiers going house to house through Dengelat, dragging people outside, binding their hands or asking others to do so, and then shooting them.

Rahwa, who was part of the Sunday school group from Edaga Hamus and left Dengelat earlier than others, managing to escape being killed, said mothers were forced to tie up their sons.

“They were ordering their mothers to tie their sons’ hands. They were taking them barefoot and killing them in front of their mothers,” Rahwa said eyewitnesses told her.

Samuel, another eyewitness, said that he had eaten and drank with the soldiers before they came to his house, which is just behind the church, and killed his relatives. He said he survived by hiding underneath one of their bodies for hours.

“They started pushing the people out of their houses and they were killing all children, women and old men. After they killed them outside their houses, they were looting and taking all the property,” Samuel said.

As the violence raged, hundreds of people remained in the church hall. In a lull in the gunfire, priests advised those who could to go home, ushering them outside. Several of the priests were killed as they left the church, Abraham said.

With nowhere to run to, Abraham sheltered inside Maryam Dengelat, lying on the floor as artillery pounded the tin roof. “We lost hope and we decided to stay and die at the church. We didn’t try to run,” he said.

Two days later, the troops called parishioners down from the church to deal with the dead. Abraham said he and five other men spent the day burying bodies, including those from Marta’s household and the Sunday school children. But the troops forbid them from burying bodies at the church, in line with Orthodox tradition, and forced them to make mass graves instead — a practice that has been described elsewhere in Tigray.

“… most of them were eaten by vultures before they got buried, it was horrible” Tedros

Abraham shared photos and videos of the grave sites, which CNN geolocated to Dengelat with the help of satellite image analysis from several experts. The analysis was unable to conclusively identify individual graves, which witnesses said were shallow, but one expert said there were signs that parts of the landscape had changed.

The initial bloodshed was followed by a period of two tense weeks, Abraham said. Soldiers stayed in the area in several encampments, stealing cars, burning crops and killing livestock before eventually moving on.

Tedros, who was born in Dengelat and traveled there after the soldiers had left, said that the village smelled of death and that vultures were circling over the mountains, a sign that there may be more bodies left uncounted there.

“Some of them were also killed in the far fields while they were trying to escape and most of them were eaten by vultures before they got buried, it was horrible. [The soldiers] tied them and killed them in front of their doors, and they shot them in the head just to save bullets,” he said.

Tedros visited the burial grounds described by eyewitnesses and said he saw cracks in the church walls where artillery hit. In interviews with villagers and family members, he compiled a death toll of more than 70 people.

The families hope that the names of their loved ones, which Tedros, Abraham and others risked their lives to record, will eventually be read out at a traditional funeral ceremony at the Maryam Dengelat church — rare closure in an ongoing conflict.

Three months after the massacre, the graves in Dengelat are a daily reminder of the bloodshed for the survivors who remain in the village. But it has not yet been safe enough to rebury the bodies of those who died, and that reality is weighing on them

 

NYT: Ethiopia’s War Leads to Ethnic Cleansing in Tigray Region, U.S. Report Says

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An internal U.S. government report found that people in Tigray are being driven from their homes in a war begun by Ethiopia, an American ally — posing President Biden’s first major test in Africa.

The New York Times | Declan Walsh | Published Feb. 26, 2021 Updated Feb. 27, 2021, 12:43 a.m. ET

NAIROBI, Kenya — Ethiopian officials and allied militia fighters are leading a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing in Tigray, the war-torn region in northern Ethiopia, according to an internal United States government report obtained by The New York Times.

The report, written earlier this month, documents in stark terms a land of looted houses and deserted villages where tens of thousands of people are unaccounted for.

Fighters and officials from the neighboring Amhara region of Ethiopia, who entered Tigray in support of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, are “deliberately and efficiently rendering Western Tigray ethnically homogeneous through the organized use of force and intimidation,” the report says.

“Whole villages were severely damaged or completely erased,” the report said.

In a second report, published Friday, Amnesty International said that soldiers from Eritrea had systematically killed hundreds of Tigrayan civilians in the ancient city of Axum over a 10-day period in November, shooting some of them in the streets.

The worsening situation in Tigray — where Mr. Abiy, winner of the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize, launched a surprise military offensive in November — is shaping up to be the Biden administration’s first major test in Africa. Former President Donald J. Trump paid little attention to the continent and never visited it, but President Joseph R. Biden has promised a more engaged approach.

In a call with President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya on Thursday, Mr. Biden brought up the Tigray crisis. The two leaders discussed “the deteriorating humanitarian and human rights crises in Ethiopia’s Tigray region and the need to prevent further loss of life and ensure humanitarian access,” a White House statement said.

But thus far Mr. Biden and other American officials have been reluctant to openly criticize Mr. Abiy’s conduct of the war, while European leaders and United Nations officials, worried about reports of widespread atrocities, have been increasingly outspoken.

On Tuesday a European Union envoy, Finland’s foreign minister, Pekka Haavisto, told reporters the situation in Tigray was “very out of control,” after returning from a fact-finding trip to Ethiopia and Sudan. The bloc suspended $110 million in aid to Ethiopia at the start of the conflict, and last month the E.U.’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, warned of possible war crimes in Tigray and said that the crisis was “unsettling” the entire region.

Ethiopia routinely dismisses critics of its campaign in Tigray as stooges of its foes in Tigray. But on Friday afternoon, in response to the Amnesty International report, Mr. Abiy’s office said it was ready to collaborate in an international investigation into atrocities in Tigray. The government “reiterates its commitment to enabling a stable and peaceful region,” it said in a statement.

Mr. Abiy’s office also claimed that Ethiopia has given “unfettered” access to international aid groups in Tigray — in contrast with U.N. officials who estimate that just 20 percent of the region can be reached by aid groups because of government-imposed restrictions.

The new U.S. Secretary of State, Antony J. Blinken, spoke with Mr. Ahmed by phone on Feb. 4 and urged him to allow humanitarian access to Tigray, the State Department said.

Alex de Waal, an expert on the Horn of Africa at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, said it is time for the United States to urgently focus on the crisis in Tigray, before more atrocities are committed and the humanitarian crisis lurches toward a famine.

“What is needed is political leadership at the highest level, and that means the U.S.,” he said.

When the United States assumes the chair of the United Nations Security Council in March, Mr. de Waal said, it should use that position to bring international pressure to bear on the belligerents to step back from a ruinous conflict.

Mr. Abiy launched the Tigray campaign on Nov. 4 following months of tension with the regional ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, which ruled Ethiopia with a tight grip for almost three decades until Mr. Abiy came to power in 2018.

But many of the worst abuses of the war have been blamed not on the Ethiopian military or the T.P.L.F. — whose armed wing is now known as the Tigray Defense Forces — but on the irregular and undeclared forces that have rallied behind Mr. Abiy’s military campaign.

Within weeks of the start of the conflict came the first reports that soldiers from Eritrea —Ethiopia’s bitter rival until the two countries reached a peace deal in 2018 — had quietly crossed into Tigray to assist Mr. Abiy’s overstretched federal forces.

In western Tigray ethnic fighters from Amhara — a region with a long rivalry with Tigray — flooded in, quickly helping Mr. Abiy capture the area.

Now it is the Eritreans and Amhara fighters who face the most serious accusations including rape, plunder and massacres that, experts say, could constitute war crimes.

The American government report about the situation in western Tigray, an area now largely controlled by Amhara militias, documents in vivid terms what it describes as an apparent campaign to force out the ethnic Tigrayan population under the cover of war.

The report documents how in several towns ethnic Tigrayans had been attacked and had their homes pillaged and burned. Some had fled into the bush; others crossed illegally into Sudan and still others had been rounded up and forcibly relocated to other parts of Tigray, the report said.

In contrast, towns with a majority Amharan population were thriving, with bustling shops, bars and restaurants, the report said.

The American report is not the first accusation of ethnic cleansing since the Tigray crisis erupted. But it does highlight how U.S. officials are quietly documenting those abuses, and reporting them to superiors in Washington.

The looming specter of mass hunger is also driving the sense of urgency over Tigray. At least 4.5 million people in the region urgently need food aid, according to the Tigray Emergency Coordination Center, which is run by Ethiopia’s federal government. Ethiopian officials say that some people have already died.

A document from Tigray’s regional government dated Feb. 2 and obtained by The Times notes that 21 people starved to death in the eastern Tigray district of Gulomokeda. Such numbers could be just the tip of the iceberg, aid officials warned.

“Today it could be one, two or three, but you know after a month it means thousands,” Abera Tola, the president of the Ethiopian Red Cross Society, told reporters earlier this month. “After two months it will be tens of thousands.”

The political outrage over Tigray, though, especially among European lawmakers, is being fueled by the growing tide of accounts of human rights abuses.

The Amnesty International report published Friday asserts that Eritrean soldiers conducted house-to-house searches in Axum in November, shooting civilians in the street and conducting extrajudicial executions of men and boys. When the shooting stopped, residents who tried to remove the bodies from the street were fired upon, the report says.

Amnesty said the massacre was likely a crime against humanity. Eritrea’s information minister, Yemane G. Meskel, rejected the report, calling it “transparently unprofessional.”

Axum, a city of ancient ruins and churches, holds great significance to followers of the Ethiopian Orthodox faith. When the Eritrean soldiers relented and allowed the bodies to be collected, hundreds were piled up in churches, including the Church of St. Mary of Zion, where many Ethiopians believe that the ark of the covenant — said to hold the tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments — is housed.

Simon Marks contributed reporting from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

EU: Tigray conflict – Joint Statement by HR/VP Borrell and Commissioner Lenarčič on massacres in Axum

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EU | Brussels, 26/02/2021 – 14:10, UNIQUE ID: 210226_7

Amnesty International issued a report today on atrocities that took place in Axum, Ethiopia, in November 2020. The report concludes that indiscriminate shelling and mass execution may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity. This is another harrowing reminder of the violence that civilians in Tigray have been suffering since the onset of the conflict. We condemn, in the strongest possible terms, all crimes against civilians and call for the perpetrators to be swiftly brought to justice. We recall the obligation under International Humanitarian Law for all parties to ensure the protection of all civilians, including refugees and those internally displaced.

Hostilities must cease immediately and immediate, full and unfettered access to the whole of Tigray for all humanitarian actors and the media allowed. Since the outbreak of the conflict more than 100 days ago, thousands of civilians have lost their lives and reportedly 80% of the population remain cut off from external assistance, facing rising food insecurity and malnutrition. The level of suffering endured by civilians, including children, is appalling. This must cease immediately. Full access is essential to assess the situation on the ground and provide adequate protection and assistance to those who desperately need it.

EU envoy says Ethiopia in ‘denial’ over Tigray

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devEx | When it comes to the conflict in northern Ethiopia, the federal government in Addis Ababa has no common understanding of events and is in “denial” over the scale of the problem, said Pekka Haavisto, European Union envoy, on Tuesday.

With negligible humanitarian access to the Tigray region since fighting broke out in November, Haavisto, Finland’s foreign minister, traveled to the region recently to assess the situation on behalf of the EU. He met with Ethiopian government ministers and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, and he visited the Um Rakuba refugee camp in Sudan.

On Monday, he reported to EU foreign ministers in Brussels, and the bloc’s foreign service will now prepare a document outlining the 27 member states’ common position.

“Almost four months into the conflict, 80% of the Tigray population of 6 million people remain unreachable,” Josep Borrell, EU high representative for foreign affairs, told reporters after Monday’s meeting. Borrell also reiterated calls for full humanitarian access and investigations into alleged human rights abuses.

“When you are in the middle of crises, usually people say things cannot get worse. But unfortunately, they can get even worse.”

— Pekka Haavisto, European Union envoy and Finnish foreign minister

Describing his meetings with top Ethiopian government officials, Haavisto told reporters in Brussels on Tuesday that “in the public domain, there is still also some kind of denial of the magnitude of the problems in the country.” Asked whether the state of denial was also reflected in his private conversations, Haavisto said that there were varying accounts on the issues of humanitarian access and human rights violations, even within the federal government.

“My picture was that even the government themselves do not have a clear picture, particularly areas controlled by Eritreans, probably areas controlled by Amhara militias,” he said. “This is the problem: That the picture, even in Addis Ababa, on what has happened, is missing. And of course, we have to admit that we don’t know exactly what has happened. [The] rumors, anecdotal evidence, is very concerning.”

Haavisto added that the EU could be useful in supporting a necessary “national dialogue” in Ethiopia where the country “would address properly the future of the Tigray area, the needs of the Tigray people after this law enforcement operation, because there is a lot of bitterness.” His description of a “law enforcement operation” — the term preferred by the Ethiopian government — contrasted with Borrell, who said at the Monday press conference that “we can call it a war.”

In December, the EU postponed €88 million in budget support to the Ethiopian government in protest of the conflict, with Jutta Urpilainen, EU commissioner for international partnerships, saying last week that the payout of a further €100 million ($120 million) due this year was also in doubt. However, some EU member states have continued their own bilateral support to the Ethiopian government.

An EU official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporters last week that that discrepancy would be “on the table” at Monday’s meeting. “I think it is one of the subjects that we have to discuss openly among member states,” the official said.

Haavisto said Tuesday that he supported the postponement of EU budget support as a “wake-up call” to the Ethiopian government and that “if things start getting from bad to worse,” then “I’m sure that then of course everybody has to look at their support and analyze it.”

He added: “When you are in the middle of crises, usually people say things cannot get worse. But unfortunately, they can get even worse.”

 

U.N. Report Accuses Blackwater Founder Erik Prince of Libya Weapons Ban Violations, Diplomat Says

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WSJ | Jared Malsin* | Mr. Prince likely to be referred to the U.N.’s Sanctions Committee, which could order a freeze on his assets or a travel ban

DUBAI—A United Nations report accuses Blackwater founder Erik Prince of assisting in violations of an international arms embargo on Libya, placing the military contractor at risk of U.N. sanctions, according to a diplomat with access to the report.

The report by the U.N. Panel of Experts that monitors the ban on transfers of weapons to Libya says companies controlled by Mr. Prince provided three aircraft to assist in sending helicopters and military contractors to help Russian-backed Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar in 2019.

The plan to send Western mercenaries to Libya developed as foreign weapons and fighters poured into the country in 2019 and 2020 from a variety of outside powers, including Russia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, deepening a conflict that has been ongoing since 2014, the report says, according to the diplomat.

Mr. Prince is likely to be referred to the U.N.’s Sanctions Committee, which could order a freeze on his assets or a travel ban, according to the New York-based diplomat and a former official with knowledge of the situation. The permanent members of the Security Council, including the U.S., Russia, or China, could veto any potential sanctions against Mr. Prince, who has had dealings with all three countries.

“Erik Prince had absolutely nothing to do with any operation in Libya in 2019, or at any other time,” a spokesman for Mr. Prince said in an email.

A U.N. spokesman said the organization had no specific comment on the Panel of Experts report.

“It is incumbent on our member states to ensure that the sanctions are respected and enforced,” said U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric De La Rivière.

The report itself has been finalized and submitted to the U.N.’s headquarters in New York. It is unlikely to be altered before it is released to the public in the coming weeks, according to diplomats.

Mr. Prince, a former Navy SEAL, came to prominence during the Iraq war, when Blackwater provided private security guards to U.S. officials and contractors working for the company shot dead more than a dozen Iraqi civilians in a 2007 mass killing in Baghdad. Blackwater has since changed its name to Xe Services and later Academi.

Mr. Prince’s financial and political ambitions rose because of his close relationship to the Trump administration. Mr. Prince is the brother of Mr. Trump’s former education secretary, Betsy DeVos. In December, Mr. Trump pardoned the four Blackwater guards accused in the 2007 killings.

Shell companies

According to the diplomat, the forthcoming U.N. report says companies controlled by Mr. Prince sold three aircraft to people who sent Western mercenaries and military hardware to aid Mr. Haftar in the opening months of the commander’s failed assault on Libya’s internationally recognized government in Tripoli. Launched in April 2019, Mr. Haftar’s attack on the capital plunged Libya into its worst fighting since the armed rebellion that overthrew Col. Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.

According to the diplomat, the U.N. panel’s report says that firms controlled by Mr. Prince sold three aircraft through a series of shell companies to a Dubai-based company, Lancaster 6, which sent helicopters and a group of Western mercenaries to Libya to support Mr. Haftar. The plan unraveled, and the fighters left Libya.

One of the planes, a Pilatus PC-6, was delivered to Libya for use in reconnaissance and intelligence operations for Mr. Haftar’s forces, according to the diplomat with access to the report. A U.S. company, TST Humanitarian Surveys, controlled by Mr. Prince through a U.S.-based attorney, sold the plane to another company in Austria partly owned by Mr. Prince, which then sold it to Lancaster 6 in June 2019, the diplomat with access to the report said. The plane arrived in Libya days later, according to the diplomat.

The other two planes, including an Antonov An-26 cargo plane intended to transport helicopters, arrived in Jordan and didn’t fly to Libya, but were identified in the report as part of a broader plan to send military aid to Mr. Haftar.

The plan also involved several associates of Mr. Prince, according to the diplomat and the former official with knowledge of the situation. The operation was first reported last year by Bloomberg and the New York Times. Until now, U.N. investigators hadn’t directly accused Mr. Prince of being involved in the scheme.

Helicopter deal

Using funds from a Dubai-based company and a cover story involving a fake plan for a geospatial survey in Jordan, the team later obtained in South Africa three Aérospatiale Gazelle helicopters and three Super Puma helicopters. At least one of the helicopters was transported to Libya. The helicopters were purchased for a total of more than $13 million, a price well above their market value and one that suggested profit was a key motive behind the operation.

“This is basically a scheme where they wanted to make money around procurement of weapons,” said the former official with knowledge of the situation.

The role in the effort of companies based in Dubai also highlights Mr. Prince’s close ties to the United Arab Emirates and its ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed. Mr. Prince has been linked to a range of mercenary efforts on behalf of the Emirates, including an effort to combat Somali pirates, according to a previous U.N. report. The U.A.E. also has been a key military backer of Mr. Haftar, sending air defenses, armed drones, ammunition and airplanes to support the militia leader’s campaigns, according to multiple U.N. reports. Mr. Prince visited Abu Dhabi in recent weeks, according to the diplomat.

The U.N. report, the diplomat said, also accuses Mr. Prince of violating a U.N. Security Council resolution by failing to provide information about the alleged violations of the arms embargo when contacted by the Panel of Experts.

In addition to naming Mr. Prince in the report, the U.N. Panel of Experts is also expected to separately refer Mr. Prince to the United Nations’ Sanctions Committee, which will make a decision about whether to impose an asset freeze or travel ban to be implemented by individual countries including the U.S., the diplomat said.

 

* Write to Jared Malsin at jared.malsin@wsj.com

Sudan and Ethiopia trade barbs over border dispute

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Al Jazeera | Clashes erupted last year between both forces over Al-Fashqa, an area of fertile land settled by Ethiopian farmers.

Sudan has accused Ethiopia of an “unforgivable insult” in its sharpest statement yet since a decades-old border dispute flared late last year.

Clashes erupted between Sudanese and Ethiopian forces over Al-Fashqa, an area of fertile land settled by Ethiopian farmers that Sudan says lies on its side of a border demarcated at the start of the 20th century, which Ethiopia rejects.

In a statement on Thursday, Ethiopia’s foreign ministry said it believes “the conflict being trumpeted by the Sudanese government’s military wing could only serve the interests of a third party at the expense of the Sudanese people”.

Sudan’s foreign ministry responded on Saturday by saying “slander towards Sudan and accusation of being an agent for other parties is a grave and unforgivable insult”.

It added: “What the Ethiopian foreign ministry cannot deny is the third party whose troops entered with Ethiopian troops trespassing on Sudanese land.”

Earlier this week, Sudan accused Ethiopian troops of crossing the border after a similar act by Ethiopian aircraft last month, both of which Ethiopia denied.

Ethiopia on Thursday reiterated its accusation that Sudan had invaded in early November, attacked and displaced Ethiopians and took control of vacated military camps.

In its statement, Sudan said Ethiopia had affirmed the 1903 border agreement several times, most recently in 2013.

It accused Ethiopia’s foreign ministry of “exploiting [the border issue] for personal interests and for the specific interests of a certain group”.

Both countries called on each other to pursue legal means to resolve the border issues.

An African Union mediator arrived in Khartoum on Thursday to discuss the conflict, as well as the continuing negotiations between Sudan, Egypt, and Ethiopia over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.

Sudan and Ethiopia trade accusations in border conflict

KHARTOUM (Reuters) – Sudan on Saturday accused Ethiopia of an “unforgivable insult” in its sharpest statement since a decades-old border dispute flared late last year.

Clashes erupted between Sudanese and Ethiopian forces over Al-Fashqa, an area of fertile land settled by Ethiopian farmers that Sudan says lies on its side of a border demarcated at the start of the 20th century, which Ethiopia rejects.

In a statement on Thursday, Ethiopia’s foreign ministry said it believes “the conflict being trumpeted by the Sudanese government’s military wing could only serve the interests of a third party at the expense of the Sudanese people”.

Sudan’s foreign ministry responded on Saturday by saying “slander towards Sudan and accusation of being an agent for other parties is a grave and unforgivable insult”.

It added: “What the Ethiopian foreign ministry cannot deny is the third party whose troops entered with Ethiopian troops trespassing on Sudanese land.”

Neither country specified the third parties to whom they were referring in their statements, although the veiled references underscored the potential for any conflict to embroil neighbouring countries.

Ethiopia may have been referring to Egypt, which has been angered by Ethiopia’s construction of a massive hydropower dam on the Blue Nile. Sudan has also expressed concerns over the dam.

Sudan may have been referring to Eritrea, whose troops entered Ethiopia to support beleaguered federal forces in Tigray after a regional force attacked military bases in November, according to the United States and European Union. Both Ethiopia and Eritrea have denied the incursion, although dozens of eyewitnesses say they have seen Eritrean soldiers in Ethiopia.

Earlier this week, Sudan accused Ethiopian troops of crossing the border after a similar act by Ethiopian aircraft last month, both of which Ethiopia denied.

Ethiopia on Thursday reiterated its accusation that Sudan had invaded in early November, attacked and displaced Ethiopians and took control of vacated military camps.

In its statement, Sudan said that Ethiopia had in the past affirmed its commitment to the 1903 border agreement several times, most recently in 2013. It accused Ethiopia’s foreign ministry of “exploiting (the border issue) for personal interests and for the specific interests of a certain group”.

Both countries called on each other to pursue legal means to resolve the border issues.

African Union mediator Mohamed Hassan Lebatt arrived in Khartoum on Thursday to discuss the conflict, as well as the ongoing negotiations between Sudan, Egypt, and Ethiopia over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.

The Sudanese foreign ministry said in a statement late on Saturday that Lebatt had emphasized the need to reduce tensions between the two neighbors, and discouraged a military solution to the conflict.

Ethiopian foreign ministry official spokesman Dina Mufti, state minister of foreign affairs Redwan Hussein and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s spokeswoman Billene Seyoum did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Saturday.

UN says malnutrition ‘very critical’ in Ethiopia’s Tigray

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NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The United Nations says Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region faces a “very critical malnutrition situation” as vast rural areas where many people fled during three months of fighting remain out of reach of aid.

The U.N. humanitarian agency also said in a new report that Ethiopian defense forces continue to occupy a hospital in the town of Abi Adi, “preventing up to 500,000 people from accessing health services” in a region where the health system has largely collapsed under looting and artillery fire.

Alarm is growing over the fate of the Tigray region’s some 6 million people as fighting is reportedly as fierce as ever between Ethiopian and allied forces and those supporting the now-fugitive Tigray leaders who once dominated Ethiopia’s government.

“The needs are tremendous, but we cannot pretend that we do not see or hear what is unfolding,” Ethiopian President Sahle-Work Zewde said in a statement on Friday after visiting the Tigray capital, Mekele.

In one of the frankest public comments yet by Ethiopia’s government, she noted “significant delays that remain in reaching people in need.”

Ethiopia on Friday said humanitarian aid has reached 2.7 million people in Tigray. But the U.N. report calls the current response “drastically inadequate,” even as some progress is made.

With some 80% of the population still unreachable, according to the Ethiopian Red Cross earlier this month, fears are growing that more people are starving to death.

“Next few weeks decisive to prevent famines,” Germany’s Foreign Office said in a brief statement last week after hearing accounts of a European Union envoy’s visit to Ethiopia.

The new U.N. report released Friday says even in areas that can be reached, a screening of 227 children under the age of 5 showed “staggeringly high malnutrition,” though it did not mention the number of cases.

It also says a screening of more than 3,500 children found 109 with severe acute malnutrition. The World Health Organization describes that condition as “when a person is extremely thin and at risk of dying.”

“Malnutrition (in Tigray) is expected to deteriorate as households are limited to fewer meals every day,” the U.N. report says.

The Tigray conflict began at a vulnerable time, just before the harvest and after months of a regional locust outbreak. The majority of the population is subsistence farmers.

The U.N. report cites “bureaucratic obstacles” and the presence of “various armed actors” as complications in the delivery of aid.

Humanitarian workers have described trying to navigate a patchwork of authorities that include ones from the neighboring Amhara region who have settled in some Tigray communities, as well as soldiers from neighboring Eritrea whom witnesses have accused of widespread looting and burning of crops.

Ethiopia’s government denies the presence of Eritrean soldiers, though the Tigray region’s interim government has confirmed it and accused them of looting food aid, according to a recent Voice of America interview.

The U.N. report describes a “dire” situation in which “COVID-19 services have stopped” in the Tigray region, displaced people in some cases are sleeping 30 to a single classroom and host communities are under “incredible strain.”

Sudan-Ethiopia mediation gathers steam

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The Arab Weekly | In Juba, Sudan’s head of state Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed will meet South Sudanese President Salva Kiir.

KHARTOUM – Leaders of Sudan and Ethiopia will separately travel to Juba next week to start a mediation bid by the South Sudanese government to defuse a border dispute.

Senior presidential aide Tut Gatluak, who has been travelling between Khartoum and Addis Ababa in recent weeks for talks with their leaders on the dispute, announced the visits on Wednesday.

While in Juba, Sudan’s head of state Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed will meet South Sudanese President Salva Kiir.

Depending on the outcome of these talks, a three-way summit could be held later in Juba, Gatluak said.

Sudan Wednesday recalled its ambassador to Ethiopia, the foreign ministry said, as tensions between the two countries are running high over a border region and Addis Ababa’s controversial Blue Nile dam.

“Sudan has recalled its ambassador to Addis Ababa for consultations over Sudanese-Ethiopian relations,” foreign ministry spokesman Mansour Boulad said.

He said the envoy would return to his post after the “completion of consultations”, without elaborating on the nature of the discussions.

Khartoum’s move comes amid rising tensions with Addis Ababa over the Al-Fashaqa border region, where Ethiopian farmers cultivate fertile land claimed by Sudan.

The two neighbouring countries have been trading accusations of violence in the area and territorial violations.

On Sunday, Khartoum claimed that Ethiopia had allowed its troops to enter Sudanese territory in an act of “aggression” and “regrettable escalation.”

Last month, Ethiopia alleged that Sudanese forces were pushing further into the border region.

Khartoum has since last month banned aircraft from flying over the Al-Fashaqa area after alleging that an Ethiopian military aircraft entered its airspace, a claim denied by Addis Ababa.

Al-Fashaqa, which has seen sporadic clashes over the years, borders Ethiopia’s troubled Tigray region, where deadly conflict erupted in November between Ethiopia’s federal and Tigray’s regional forces.

The fighting sent some 60,000 Ethiopian refugees fleeing into Sudan.

The tensions come at a delicate time between the two countries, which along with Egypt have been locked in inconclusive talks over the massive Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile River.

This month, Sudan warned Ethiopia against going ahead with the second phase of fil

ling the mega dam, saying it would pose a “direct threat to Sudanese national security.”

Ethiopia, which says it has already reached its first-year target for filling the dam’s reservoir, has recently signalled it would proceed with the filling regardless of whether or not a deal was struck.

Khartoum hopes the dam will regulate annual flooding, but fears its own dams, including the Roseires and Merowe, will be harmed if no agreement is reached.

‘Horrible’: Witnesses recall massacre in Ethiopian holy city

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NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Bodies with gunshot wounds lay in the streets for days in Ethiopia’s holiest city. At night, residents listened in horror as hyenas fed on the corpses of people they knew. But they were forbidden from burying their dead by the invading Eritrean soldiers.

Those memories haunt a deacon at the country’s most sacred Ethiopian Orthodox church in Axum, where local faithful believe the ancient Ark of the Covenant is housed. As Ethiopia’s Tigray region slowly resumes telephone service after three months of conflict, the deacon and other witnesses gave The Associated Press a detailed account of what might be its deadliest massacre.

For weeks, rumors circulated that something ghastly had occurred at the Church of St. Mary of Zion in late November, with estimates of several hundred people killed. But with Tigray cut off from the world and journalists blocked from entering, little could be verified as Ethiopian and allied fighters pursued the Tigray region’s fugitive leaders.

The deacon, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he remains in Axum, said he helped count the bodies — or what was left after hyenas fed. He gathered victims’ identity cards and assisted with burials in mass graves.

He believes some 800 people were killed that weekend at the church and around the city, and that thousands in Axum have died in all. The killing continues: On the day he spoke to the AP last week he said he had buried three people.

“If we go to the rural areas, the situation is much worse,” the deacon said.

The atrocities of the Tigray conflict have occurred in the shadows. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for making peace with neighboring Eritrea, announced the fighting as the world focused on the U.S. election. He accused Tigray’s regional forces, whose leaders dominated Ethiopia for nearly three decades before he took office, of attacking the Ethiopian military. Tigray’s leaders called it self-defense after months of tensions.

While the world clamors for access to Tigray to investigate suspected atrocities on all sides and deliver aid to millions of hungry people, the prime minister has rejected outside “interference.” He declared victory in late November and said no civilians had been killed. His government denies the presence of thousands of soldiers from Eritrea, long an enemy of the Tigray leaders.

Ethiopia’s narrative, however, has crumbled as witnesses like the deacon emerge. The foreign ministry on Thursday acknowledged that “rape, plunder, callous & intentional mass killings” could occur in a conflict where “many are illegally armed.” Its statement blamed Tigray forces for leaving the region “vulnerable” and said any serious offense will be investigated. It did not mention Eritrean soldiers.

Axum, with its ancient ruins and churches, holds major significance for the Ethiopian Orthodox faithful, who believe that the Ark of the Covenant, built to hold the tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments, is located there.

“If you attack Axum, you attack first of all the identity of Orthodox Tigrayans but also of all Ethiopian Orthodox Christians,” said Wolbert Smidt, an ethnohistorian who specializes in the region. “Axum itself is regarded as a church in the local tradition, ‘Axum Zion.’”

In a normal year, thousands of people would have gathered at the Zion church in late November to celebrate the day Ethiopians believe the Ark of the Covenant was brought there after it disappeared from Jerusalem in ancient times.

Instead, the church had become a refuge for people who fled the fighting elsewhere in Tigray. They sheltered there as worship services were underway two days before the anniversary.

Eritrean and Ethiopian soldiers had arrived in Axum more than a week earlier, with heavy bombardment. But on Nov. 28 the Eritrean soldiers returned in force to hunt down members of the local militia who had mobilized against them in Axum and nearby communities.

The deacon recalled soldiers bursting into the church, cornering and dragging out worshippers and shooting at those who fled.

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“I escaped by chance with a priest,” he said. “As we entered the street, we could hear gunfire all over.” They kept running, stumbling over the dead and wounded along with others trying to find places to hide.

Most of the hundreds of victims were killed that day, he said, but the shooting and looting continued the following day.

“They started to kill people who were moving from church to home or home to home, simply because they were on the street,” another witness, visiting university lecturer Getu Mak, told the AP. “It was a horrible act to see.” He watched the fighting from his hotel room, then ventured out as it eased.

“On every corner, almost, there was a body,” he said. “People were crying in every home.”

Another witness, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said soldiers killed a man at his home near the Zion church. “How can I tell you? So many dead,” said the man, who has since escaped to the Tigray capital, Mekele.

After the killings in Axum came an uneasy period with soldiers roaming the streets and families searching for loved ones. At night, hyenas descended from nearby hills.

The city began to smell of death as some bodies went untouched for days.

“I saw a horse cart carrying around 20 bodies to the church, but Eritrean soldiers stopped them and told people to throw them back on the street,” said Getu, the university lecturer.

Witnesses elsewhere in Tigray have reported being unable to bury bodies, calling it an added insult. They say soldiers tell them that “no one mourned our fighters, so why should we let you mourn?”

Finally, when the soldiers left the city to pursue other fighters, residents mobilized to bury the bodies, the deacon said.

“We could not do a formal burial,” he said. “We buried them en masse” in graves near the Zion church and others.

Some of the dead were among the hundreds of thousands of people in Tigray displaced by the conflict and not known to Axum residents. Their identity cards were collected in churches, where they await the discovery of loved ones.

The deacon said residents believe the Eritrean soldiers were taking revenge for the two-decade border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea that played out nearby and ended after Abiy became prime minister. Some of the soldiers told residents they had been instructed to kill people as young as 12, he said.

Another witness, a 39-year-old who gave only his first name, Mhretab, and escaped weeks ago to the United States, asserted that Ethiopian federal police did nothing to rein in the Eritrean soldiers.

“I said to them, ’Listen, you’re Ethiopian, they’re destroying Ethiopian cities. How is this possible?‴ Mhretab recalled.

”They said, ‘What can we do? This shouldn’t have happened from the beginning. This is from above,’” indicating that it had been decided by senior officials, he said.

He said he ferried bodies to a mass grave by the Zion church and estimated that he saw 300 to 400 there.

The deacon believes that the Eritrean soldiers, in their hunt for Tigray fighters, have killed thousands more people in villages outside Axum. “When they fight and lose, they take revenge on the farmers and kill everyone they can find,” he said. “This is what we’ve seen in the past three months.”

Getu echoed that belief, citing his uncle, who survived such a rural confrontation.

The deacon has not gone to the villages outside Axum. His work remains with his church, where services continue even as he says the Tigray conflict is as fierce as ever.

“We’re also protecting the church,” he said. “Even now, I’m talking to you from there. We are not armed. What we do is mostly watching. And, of course, praying that God protects us.”