💭 On Day Biden Calls Ethiopia’s Leader to Urge Peace, a Drone Strike Kills 17
The attack came days after over 50 people were killed in a strike on a refugee camp, highlighting the growing role of armed drones in a destructive war.
On the same day that President Biden spoke with his Ethiopian counterpart, Abiy Ahmed, about a possible window for peace in the long-running war in Tigray, at least 17 people, including women and children, were killed in an airstrike, aid workers said.
The strike on Monday came days after dozens more were killed after a drone opened fire on a refugee camp in Ethiopia’s northern region of Tigray and highlighted the increasingly deadly role of armed drones, some supplied by American allies, in a conflict that has badly destabilized Africa’s second most populous country.
Video from the aftermath of the strike on Friday, provided by aid workers, showed the charred bodies of women and children laid out on blue plastic sheeting bearing the United Nations logo. On Monday the U.N. secretary general, António Guterres, said he was “deeply concerned” about the attack, which occurred hours after the Ethiopian government issued a call for “national reconciliation.” At least 50 people had been killed, he said.
Prime Minister Abiy stoked hopes for a cease-fire on Friday with the release of prominent political prisoners, including a founding member of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, or T.P.L.F., which Mr. Abiy’s government has been fighting since November 2020.
On Monday, in their first direct conversation as leaders, Mr. Biden called Mr. Abiy, winner of the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize, to urge him to “accelerate progress toward a negotiated ceasefire” and open up humanitarian access across the country, the White House said in a statement.
The prisoner releases, and Mr. Abiy’s calls for a national dialogue, present “a moment of opportunity, if the parties are willing and able to seize it,” a senior administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity told reporters in a briefing about the conversation. Mr. Biden also expressed his concern about civilian deaths from airstrikes.
But hours later, news filtered through of another attack.
Missiles slammed into a flour mill in Mai Tsebri, in the Tigray region, on Monday afternoon, killing at least 17 people and wounding dozens, aid workers with two organizations and local officials said. Witnesses reported seeing drones in the skies before the strike, they said.
Most of the dead were women who had gone to the mill to grind cereals, according to an internal United Nations report cited by one aid worker.
The aid workers spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid reprisals from Ethiopia, which expelled several U.N. and international aid officials last year, and has detained numerous journalists including a video journalist accredited to the Associated Press arrested last month.
Col. Getnet Adane, a spokesman for the Ethiopian military, referred questions about the airstrikes to the Ethiopian government spokesman, who did not respond.
A mediator appointed by the African Union, Olusegun Obasanjo, a former president of Nigeria, flew into the Tigrayan capital Mekelle on Tuesday morning, two Western diplomats said. Hours later, gunfire rang out across the city as Tigrayan antiaircraft guns opened fire, apparently in reaction to drones circling overhead, an aid official in the city said.
The United States has repeatedly called on Eritrea, whose troops are fighting in Tigray in support of Mr. Abiy, to withdraw their forces — a call reiterated by the senior American official who briefed reporters on Monday.
But the official declined to comment on the role of other countries accused of fueling the fighting, including the United Arab Emirates — a major American ally.
Powerful Chinese-built drones supplied by the U.A.E. to Ethiopia, as well as less powerful models supplied by Turkey, played a major role in a string of dramatic battlefield victories by Mr. Abiy’s forces in December, Western officials and analysts said.
Understand the Conflict in Ethiopia
A year of war. On Nov. 4, 2020, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed began a military campaign in the country’s northern Tigray region, hoping to vanquish the Tigray People’s Liberation Front — his most troublesome political foe.
Rebels turned the tide. Despite Mr. Abiy’s promise of a swift campaign, the Ethiopian military suffered a major defeat in June when it was forced to withdraw from Tigray. The fighting subsequently moved south.
Tigrayan forces close in. In late October, Tigrayan rebels captured two towns near Addis Ababa, the nation’s capital. The government declared a state of emergency and called on citizens to arm themselves.
Drones tip the balance. A string of victories at the end of 2021 signaled that the Ethiopian government was regaining its footing on the battlefield. A fleet of combat drones acquired from allies in the Persian Gulf region was a decisive factor in the reversal.
Atrocities on both sides. A United Nations report in November offered evidence that all sides involved in the conflict had committed atrocities. Since the start of the war, the Ethiopian and Tigrayan forces have since been accused of carrying out transgressions including extrajudicial killings.
Since August, Ethiopia has also acquired drones from Iran. Websites that track international flights have detected cargo flights into Ethiopia from Chengdu, the Chinese city where the powerful Wing Loong drone is manufactured.
It is unclear which armed drones carried out the latest deadly strikes in Tigray, but supplies of military equipment are increasingly becoming a focus of international efforts to halt the fighting.
The United States pressured the U.A.E. to stop an earlier round of drone strikes in the opening weeks of the war, foreign diplomats say. Last week the White House appointed a new special envoy to the Horn of Africa, David Satterfield, to replace Jeffrey Feltman.
Mr. Satterfield is currently the American ambassador to Turkey and has raised the issue of recent sales of armed drones to Ethiopia with Turkish officials, officials say.
The drone war comes against the backdrop of a soaring humanitarian crisis. At least 9.4 million people in northern Ethiopia urgently need help, the U.N. says, but a government blockade has prevented vital supplies of food and medicine from reaching Tigray, where the majority live.
Less than 12 percent of required supplies got through between July and December, according to the U.N., and last week doctors at Tigray’s main hospital issued a desperate appeal for basic supplies including antibiotics, surgical gloves and medicine to treat cancer.
“We are just counting deaths that happen due to totally preventable causes,” Mussie Tesfay, administrator of the Ayder Referral Hospital, said in an email. “It is just so heartbreaking to see our beloved patients die one by one.”
💭 A drone strike hit a flour mill in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region on Monday, killing at least 17 people, mostly women and wounded dozens in the town of Mai Tsebri, two aid workers told Reuters, citing local authorities and eyewitnesses.
This followed an air strike that killed 56 people and injured 30, including children, in a camp for displaced people in Tigray on Friday, Orthodox Christmas Day. U.S. President Joe Biden raised concerns with Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on Monday about civilian casualties and suffering caused by air strikes.
Ethiopian military spokesperson Colonel Getnet Adane and government spokesperson Legesse Tulu did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Mai Tsebri strike.
The government has previously denied targeting civilians in the 14-month conflict, which pits Abiy’s federal forces and their regional allies, backed by Eritrea, against rebellious forces of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).
💭 “At least 400,000 people are living in famine-like conditions, according to the United Nations, putting another dark mark on Turkey’s extensive human rights breaching record.”
A drone strike in Ethiopia’s Oriental Orthodox Christian-majority Tigray region killed 56 people and injured 30, including children, in a camp for displaced people, two aid workers told Reuterson Saturday, citing local authorities and eyewitness accounts.
Military spokesman Colonel Getnet Adane and government spokesman Legesse Tulu did not immediately respond to requests for comment and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s spokeswoman Billene Seyoum did not respond to a request for comment.
The government has previously denied targeting civilians in the 14-month conflict with Tigrayan forces.
The spokesman for the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) that has been fighting the central government, Getachew Reda, said in a tweet that:
“Another callous drone attack by Abiy Ahmed in an IDP (Internally Displaced People) camp in Dedebit has claimed the lives of 56 innocent civilians so far.”
The strike in the town of Dedebit, in the northwest of the region near the border with Eritrea, occurred late on Friday night, said the aid workers, who asked not to be named as they are not authorised to speak to the media.
Earlier on Friday, the government had freed several opposition leaders from prison and said it would begin dialogue with political opponents in order to foster reconciliation. read more
Both aid workers said the number of dead was confirmed by the local authorities. The aid workers sent Reuters pictures they said they had taken of the wounded in hospital, who included many children.
One of the aid workers, who visited Shire Suhul General Hospital where the injured were brought for treatment, said the camp hosts many old women and children.
“They told me the bombs came at midnight. It was completely dark and they couldn’t escape,” the aid worker said.
Ethiopian federal troops went to war with Tigrayan forces in November 2020 and have committed gross atrocities against the Oriental Orthodox population.
After Ethiopia’s embattled prime minister reversed a Tigrayan march on the capital that threatened to overthrow him, he credited the bravery of his troops.
“Ethiopia is proud of your unbelievable heroism,” the jubilant leader, Abiy Ahmed, told his troops on the battlefront at Kombolcha, on Dec. 6. “You were our confidence when we said Ethiopia would never lose.”
In reality, the reason for the reversal in Abiy’s fortunes was hovering in the skies above: a fleet of combat drones, recently acquired from allies in the Persian Gulf region and elsewhere who are determined to keep him in power.
Over the past four months, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Iran have quietly supplied Abiy with some of the latest armed drones, even as the United States and African governments were urging a cease-fire and peace talks, according to two Western diplomats who have been briefed on the crisis and spoke on condition of anonymity.
At least 400,000 people are living in famine-like conditions, according to the United Nations, putting another dark mark on Turkey’s extensive human rights breaching record.
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