“I had never heard of hyenas eating dead people, so many dead that you couldn’t bury them.”
H. A., which is what he has asked me to call him because of the very real threat of reprisal against his friends and relations abroad, knows what violence looks like. Born to a well-to-do family in Addis Ababa, he was imprisoned by the Derg communist junta that ruled from 1974 until 1991 before coming to this country with his parents. He is familiar with torture, and with Manchurian Candidate-style brainwashing techniques.
So when he told me that what is going on in Ethiopia now is worse than anything he has ever seen in his native country, and far worse than what had been reported in Western media until very recently, he was worth taking seriously: “I had never heard of hyenas eating dead people, so many dead that you couldn’t bury them.”
H.A. is one of only a few American citizens to have been in Ethiopia late last year and to have made his way back to the United States. He survived the mid-November bombing campaign in Maekaelle, the capital of the Tigray region, where genocide and ethnic cleansing are being carried out by the Ethiopian government with the cooperation of the Eritrean armed forces.
“We were scared,” he said. “I could see the pilots, the planes from my room. They came at least 30 times. I was sleeping so I had to fall from the bed. I was taking a nap. I didn’t know where to go.”
H.A. also confirms what some outside observers have suspected, namely that in Ethiopia there was violence well before November, when reports first emerged of a government-forced blackout following a canceled election. In the countryside, he said, militias were stealing food and burning crops in October. Women were raped, children were murdered. At a farm owned by one of his relations, all but one of the farmhands were killed; at a looted factory owned by a business associate, no one survived. Ethiopian military personnel claimed that nothing could be done.
He says at first it was rumored that children were responsible. “This guy was telling me, ‘They are burning our farms.’ ‘Who is burning them?’ ‘They are kids.’ Then we would hear, ‘Oh, at this church the priest was killed.’ People were running away. The militia would come to the houses and rape indiscriminately, saying ‘We’ll take your food, whatever is not good enough, we’ll burn it.'”
The militia in Tigray have seemingly been the vanguard of Eritrean forces, whose war crimes in the region have been reported by The Associated Press and Amnesty International. “The Eritreans, they can do whatever they want,” H.A. describes. “Here, they put the Ethiopian army or militia in front, and then when the local people get really weak, that’s when they come and push them away and then kill more of the people.”
After spending most of 2020 in Ethiopia, where he had been engaged in business activities and found his ability to travel limited due to COVID-19 restrictions, H.A. says he was cut off from his bank account at the end of the year, stuck in a hotel that he could not leave because he had no hard currency. He had to undergo a military interrogation before finding himself at the mercy of an airport ticket agent who had been ordered to ethnically profile passengers. “After I left the counter someone shouted, ‘He looks Tigrayan, stop him!’ At the last gate I explained that I had been interrogated by someone senior. There was name-calling. They do not talk to you the way they did before this war.” He was finally able to leave only thanks to the assistance of the Red Cross in the United States after a friend guaranteed payment for his airfare.
The ethnic profiling of Tigrayans is one of the reasons H.A. says the situation in Ethiopia is worse than it was during the long years of communist rule. “The Derg tortured me for being the son of a wealthy man, to brainwash me. But this is worse, because if you accepted, they were okay. But this time, because of your ethnicity they will kill you and rape the women. If you run, they shoot you, and if you don’t run they collect you and shoot you.”
❖❖❖Massacre in The Mountains They Thought They’d Be Safe at a Church. Then The Soldiers Arrived❖❖❖ 😥😥😥
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”
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.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on February 27, 2021
Axum is a historical city – an ancient site of pilgrimage in the Ethiopian region of Tigray.
But a vicious conflict arrived in this community on the morning of 28 November, and it was signaled by the crack of gunfire from the surrounding hills.
These shots would mark the beginning of 24 hours of unspeakable violence and mass executions, according to Amnesty International.
The human rights group has compiled evidence and testimony from more than 40 witnesses and says the allegations contained within its report may constitute crimes against humanity.
💭 Selected comments from SKY:
What happened in Tigray is very sad! The world is watching as nothing happened so much for Human rights propaganda by the west!
Abiy and isayas are bloody handed they must see their crime on international crime court
It is not only by Eritrean soldiers the amhara and ethiopia soldiers were also involved in Tigray genocide 😥
Eritrea government kills its own ppl so no wonder about this I’m from Eritrea 🇪🇷 that’s why ppl leave their own country.
Jamal Osman is a multi-award winning journalist and filmmaker specialising sub-Saharan Africa. He has been working with ITN/Channel 4 News since 2008. Jamal has scooped interviews with Somali pirates, the al-Qaeda-linked Islamist group, Al-Shabab, exposed the illegal trade in UN food aid and told the struggles of Somali athletes training for the Olympics.
It wasn’t so long ago that the Prime Minister of Ethiopia was receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for ending a conflict with Eritrea.
Today Amnesty International released a report accusing both the Eritrean and Ethiopian governments of working alongside each other to commit atrocities.
Ethiopia and Eritrea brought their two-decade long conflict with each other to an end in 2019.
Now it seems they have a common enemy in Tigray, an Ethiopian province along the border with Eritrea.
Amnesty says Eritrean forces massacred hundreds of civilians in the sacred city of Axum last November.
We report from the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, and a warning: his report has distressing images from the start.
💭 “In western Tigray ethnic fighters from Amhara — a region with a long rivalry with Tigray — flooded in, quickly helping Mr. Abiy capture the area.”
“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.”
“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.”
👉 A confidential 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.
It wasn’t so long ago that the Prime Minister of Ethiopia was receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for ending a conflict with Eritrea.
Today Amnesty International released a report accusing both the Eritrean and Ethiopian governments of working alongside each other to commit atrocities.
Ethiopia and Eritrea brought their two-decade long conflict with each other to an end in 2019.
Now it seems they have a common enemy in Tigray, an Ethiopian province along the border with Eritrea.
Amnesty says Eritrean forces massacred hundreds of civilians in the sacred city of Axum last November.
We report from the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, and a warning: his report has distressing images from the start.
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 a confidential 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’s administration 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.
A woman is seen through the shattered windshield of a military truck that belonged to Tigrayan forces.
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. Maeskel, 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.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on February 26, 2021
💭 Tigray conflict: Joint Statement by HR/VP Borrell and Commissioner Lenarčič on massacres in Axum
Josep Borrell, High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy/Vice-President of the Commission and Janez Lenarčič, Commissioner for Crisis Management, issued the following Joint Statement:
“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.”
“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.”
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
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.”
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.
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.”
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.”
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