🐇 The Easter Bunny was seen moving a “confused” Joe Biden along after he “wandered off” to answer questions and take selfies with kids at the White House’s Easter Egg Roll.
The president began discussing Pakistan and Afghanistan with a crowd before the bunny was seen ushering him away in a video which was first posted to Twitter by journalist journalist Thomas C. Dillon.
Former California House candidate Buzz Patterson commented on the video: “Some staffer in a bunny outfit interrupts the most important person in the world. Only in Biden’s America”.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has begun investigating the deaths of almost 100 people in South Sudan. The deaths occurred in Fangak and Jonglei State in South Sudan.
The BBC noted that initial samples collected in the area returned negative for cholera, and spoke to the WHO’s Sheila Baya who explained the ongoing concerns. She said so far there had been 89 deaths and an investigation was ongoing.
Baya told the BBC: “We decided to send a rapid response team to go and do risk assessment and an investigation.
“That is when they will be able to collect samples from the sick people but provisionally the figure that we got was that there were 89 deaths.”
She also noted that it has become increasingly difficult to reach the Fangak area due to flooding that has made it inaccessible by land. She and her team subsequently waited for a helicopter.
The flooding in the area has been so severe it has caused over 200,000 people to flee their homes. Humanitarian agency Concern Worldwide has said it has been the worst flooding in almost 60 years.
Concern’s County Director in South Sudan, Shumon Sengupta, explained the dire situation.
He said: “The magnitude of the flooding this year has been immense. Over 200,000 people, more than a quarter of the local population in Unity State have been forced to leave their homes as a result of rising floodwaters.
“There has not been flooding on this scale in the region since 1962, according to local records, and despite agencies like Concern Worldwide working tirelessly to respond to the escalating humanitarian crisis, (with financial assistance of donors such as BHA/USAID, ECHO, GAC, EFP and UNICEF) the needs far exceed the current scale of the humanitarian response, both within and outside the camps for internally displaced people.
“Families have been displaced and are sheltering on higher ground, in public buildings or with neighbours or family. Access to basic services including health and nutrition support has been disrupted as clinics have been damaged, submerged in floodwaters, or are inaccessible.”
International charity Médecins Sans Frontières has also previously commented on how the flooding has put pressure on health facilities.
They said: “We are extremely concerned about malnutrition, with severe acute malnutrition levels two times the WHO threshold, and the number of children admitted to our hospital with severe malnutrition doubling since the start of the floods.”
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on April 6, 2021
As the war in Ethiopia enters its fifth month, millions of displaced people in the northern region of Tigray are now facing a further crisis – hunger.
Violence has interrupted the main food supply routes and farms have been destroyed.
Many have lost their income and prices have increased for the little food still available to buy.
Pressure is now mounting on the country’s Nobel peace prize-winning Prime Minister to supply aid to the starving.
🔥 Tigray Is Being Deliberately Starved to Death – Starvation is Being Used as a Weapon of War – Relentlessly & Systematically.
Millions of people in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region are facing starvation. Until now, it’s been a crisis without pictures. Those wrenching images of emaciated children and mothers with dull-eyed gazes, so sadly familiar from famine zones, have yet to emerge. But that’s because journalists aren’t permitted to travel to the worst-hit areas of Tigray, where hunger is deepening by the day. When the media can finally get access, or when starving villagers abandon their homes and flee to towns, the pictures will surely remind viewers of drought victims from Ethiopia’s 1984 famine, which prompted the famous LiveAid benefit concert and a vast outpouring of charity.
Now, though, there is no drought and no harvest failure. Tigrayans are hungry today because starvation is being used as a weapon of war—relentlessly and systematically. ..
“In our lifetime, or even in our history, we have not seen such wickedness,” he said. “They killed youngsters who were wearing white clothes after having taken the Holy Communion. One woman who was holding a child and shouting ‘my son, my son’ was singled out and killed, and her seven-month-old baby fell to the ground right in front of us.”😠😠😠 😢😢😢
The 78-year-old Orthodox priest stayed inside his house until the killers had gone. Then, leaning on his wooden cane and holding a crucifix, he rushed outside to cover the bodies of his four sons and his two grandsons. Blood seeped through their white cotton scarves.
“They gathered them together and massacred them,” Lieqah Teaguhann Abraha Gaebbrrae said of the killers he identified as Eritrean soldiers by their accents, uniforms and facemarks.
They had arrived on foot in late November, he said, as the priest and his family were sharing injera flatbread and lentils to celebrate a Christian Orthodox holiday in the village of Dengelat in Tigray, the northernmost region of Ethiopia.
The celebration fell in the midst of conflict — the culmination of a power struggle between the Ethiopian government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF, a regional party that ruled the country for 27 years until 2018.
This war has tipped Ethiopia, a gradually liberalising economic powerhouse and Africa’s second most populous country, into crisis. As tightly restricted humanitarian and foreign media access is loosened, testimonies such as that of Abraha are bubbling to the surface.
So too is evidence of the involvement of troops from Eritrea, which neighbours Tigray, to help the Ethiopian government fight the battle-hardened TPLF. After previous denials, this week Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s prime minister, conceded that Eritrean troops had crossed into Ethiopia because, he said, they feared attack from the TPLF. During a meeting in Asmara on Friday, Isaias Afewerki, Eritrea’s strongman, “agreed to withdraw its forces out of the Ethiopian border”, read a statement from Abiy’s office.
For Eritrea, this conflict has been an opportunity to fight its decades-old Tigrayan foe, many claim. “This is open season for Eritrea,” said a foreign diplomat in Ethiopia. “Isaias wants to get rid of Tigray once and for all.” Their involvement and that of local militias and forces from elsewhere in Ethiopia has escalated a conflict that threatens to destabilise the region.
“You speak like us in Tigrinya. You are Eritreans. We are brothers. Come in and eat with us,” Abraha recalled telling six soldiers. But instead they took six men, aged between 15 and 46, to the banks of the nearby river, tied their hands behind their backs and shot them in the head. “They killed unarmed human beings whom they have not seen killing others. They are barbarians,” Abraha said.
‘Payback for Eritrea’
In total, local church officials and members of the Inter-Religious Council of Tigray estimate that at least 164 civilians were killed in Dengelat over two days in late November.
These are just a few of the thousands that diplomats and aid workers say have died since early November when Abiy began the so-called law and order operation against the TPLF, an organisation he has labelled a “criminal clique”. Weeks later, Addis Ababa claimed to “have completed and ceased military operations in the Tigray region”, establishing its own government there and killing or capturing some senior members of the TPLF leadership.
But the fighting rumbles on and Ethiopian and Eritrean forces, Tigrayan and other ethnic militias now stand accused of atrocities and even “ethnic cleansing”.
“This could be like the former Yugoslavia. Ethiopians will be digging up mass graves for a decade,” said a senior humanitarian official in Tigray.
Top members of the interim government in Tigray, which was appointed by Abiy, admit that Eritreans are in “full control” of a strip of Ethiopian territory of about 100km along the border. In private, even some senior federal government officials admit that the Eritreans remain present.
The involvement of Eritrea, where conscription is unavoidable and often indefinite, “is payback” because “the TPLF is the biggest existential threat to both Tigray and Eritrea”, said a senior federal government official, adding that Eritrean solders “have to leave” now because this has turned into “a majorly ugly war”.
The UN, US and EU have condemned the Eritrean presence in Tigray and said the perpetrators of human rights abuses should be held accountable. On Monday, the EU imposed sanctions on Eritrea, partly for its involvement in Tigray, diplomats say.
Eritrea’s information minister, Yaemmanae Ghaebremasqael, dismissed the allegations of abuses by Eritrean forces as “outrageous”, while the foreign ministry accused the EU of “doggedly working” to save the “TPLF clique” and to “drive a wedge between Eritrea and Ethiopia”.
For its part, Ethiopia’s foreign ministry has strongly denied ethnically motivated violence. The Ethiopian government recently said in a statement that “it undertook the law enforcement operations in the Tigray region with utmost precaution to avoid as much as possible collateral damage on civilians”, adding that it “takes any allegations of human rights abuses and crimes very seriously”.
Officials in Addis Ababa say the TPLF is “the source of all this mess”, blaming the party for almost three decades of dictatorship and fomenting ethnic division. Addis Ababa alleges the TPLF sought to undermine Abiy by sponsoring terrorist attacks around the country. It blames the TPLF and its militias for carrying out massacres, such as one at Mai Kadra in western Tigray in November.
Mulu Nega, the interim president of Tigray who was handpicked by Addis Ababa, said TPLF fighters were using civilians as “human shields”. “We’re trying to minimise this, but we cannot avoid completely human rights abuses,” he said in his office in the Tigrayan capital, Mekelle.
“This is a dirty war,” Yohannes Gebremeskel Tesfamariam, a government general in charge of a task force on the Tigray conflict, told diplomats during a March briefing in Mekelle. “On the atrocities, rape, crime . . . I don’t think we are going to be fortunate to see that such things have not happened,” he added.
Getachew Reda, a senior member of the TPLF, warned from his hide-out that TPLF forces would continue to fight until Tigrayans were liberated from what he called “occupation and perpetrators of genocide”.
‘In our lifetime . . . we have not seen such wickedness’
The wreckage of war is in plain sight on the 100km drive north of Mekelle to Dengelat. The Financial Times passed shelled villages, churches and mosques, looted factories, mangled tanks and charred combat trucks.
On arrival at the mountainous village of stone houses, men immediately rushed out to show mass graves — allegedly of between three and 13 people each — covered with cactus leaves or corrugated zinc. Women crouched under eucalyptus trees, holding photographs of dead relatives, sobbing in anger and despair.
Locals said “Eritrean soldiers” had fired on civilians, saying their orders were to get rid of potential TPLF militias. Some climbed a rock escarpment to shelter in the church but were warned by soldiers it would be shelled. Some who fled were shot dead.
Then, residents say, the Eritrean soldiers went on a murderous spree. They broke into the house of Yemane Gebremariam, 53, a seller of soft drinks. Out of the 13 people gathered there, he said, they killed seven, including his daughter and newly wed son, whose wife was shot in the hand.
“In our lifetime, or even in our history, we have not seen such wickedness,” he said. “They killed youngsters who were wearing white clothes after having taken the Holy Communion. One woman who was holding a child and shouting ‘my son, my son’ was singled out and killed, and her seven-month-old baby fell to the ground right in front of us.”
Weeping outside the church at Dengelat, 53-year-old Emnti Gobezay described the past months of conflict as “the worst war I’ve seen in my lifetime”, surpassing the TPLF’s insurgent war against the Derg regime in the early 1990s and the subsequent border war with Eritrea.
“I saw them with my own eyes,” she sobbed, describing when the “Eritreans” caught and killed her 20-year-old son. The Ethiopian government and its Eritrean “supporters” want “to wipe out the people of Tigray” by killing “peaceful people, teenagers, children, and priests”, she said.
Holding a leaf from a eucalyptus tree, she said: “The innocent blood of Tigrayans will fertilise this ground and grow fresh leaves. Our dead children will not be forgotten.”
The Shelling of a Tigrayan Church by Abiy Ahmed | St. Emmanuel Church Wuqro
The footage, recorded with a smart phone from a distance, shows Amanuel Orthodox church being shelled. The church is situated atop a hill near the famous Negash (al-Nejashi) mosque which has also been attacked and damaged.
According to the person who recorded the footage, the church was shelled by artillery fired by tanks on November 24, 2020. The church was, the person added, shelled 17 times, but not all of them hit their target, some landing on the hill. The person also added that the shelling was done by the Eritrean army, which he said he saw in close range. In the video, one voice is heard saying “Medhane Alem Adi Kesho has also been shelled”.
The invading armies have deliberately targeted Tigrayan religious sites. The most gruesome massacres are also committed in churches, as the massacres in Mariam Dengelat church and Mariam Tsion of Aksum showed.
Reports indicate churches are the main massacre sites. Their valuable properties are also looted. But they are also shelled and destroyed. In a recent interview Father Sereke Berhan from Australia did with another religious father from Tigray, churches in all parts of Tigray have been shelled, looted and plundered. He mentioned Debre Damo, Debre Abay in western Tigray, churches in Atsbi, churches in Hawzen and churches in many other places. The interviewee also added that he counted 70 priests that have been killed. He also said the Eritrean soldiers deliberately urinate on the Tigrayan churches while the faithful are there.
U.N.: ‘Hundreds of Civilians Killed’ in Ethiopia Tigray Conflict
The Above Image: Ethiopian Asafu Alamaya, a 80-year-old blind who fled the Tigray conflict, is guided by her daughter at the Um Raquba refugee camp in Sudan’s eastern Gedaref state, on December 12, 2020.
Eyewitness reports suggest that artillery strikes have killed “hundreds of civilians” in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region amid an ongoing military conflict there, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said on Tuesday.
“We have received allegations concerning violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law, including artillery strikes on populated areas, the deliberate targeting of civilians, extrajudicial killings and widespread looting,” High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet told journalists in Geneva on December 22.
“These reports point to failure by the parties to the conflict to protect civilians. This is all the more concerning given that fighting is said to be continuing, particularly in some areas of north, central and southern Tigray,” she said.
The U.N. on Tuesday noted several recent accounts by people on the ground in Tigray alleging human rights violations.
Witnesses have described “artillery strikes on the town of Humera on the border with Eritrea between 9 and 11 November,” the international body noted.
The U.N. Human Rights Office said it interviewed several people from Humera “who alleged that shells launched from Eritrea had hit residential areas and the hospital. The Ethiopian army and regional Amhara forces and militia then reportedly took control of Humera, allegedly killing civilians and looting the hospital, banks, businesses, supermarkets, and private houses.”
Refugees crossing into Sudan from Ethiopia have made similar claims, “telling reporters and aid workers that artillery shells that hit towns in western Tigray had come from Eritrea,” the Guardian reported on December 21.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki both oppose the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF), which dominated Ethiopia’s federal government for nearly 30 years before Abiy was elected to office in 2018. The ongoing conflict between the separatist TPLF and Addis Ababa began on November 4 after Abiy accused Tigrayan forces of attacking a federal military base. Ethiopian and Eritrean authorities have denied Eritrea’s involvement in the Tigray conflict.
“Artillery strikes against the town of Adigrat in early November reportedly forced many families to flee to the mountains, where they were then trapped by heavy fighting between 20 and 24 November, with many people reported to have been killed,” the U.N. further revealed at Tuesday’s press conference.
“Based on multiple accounts, the Amhara ‘Fano’ militia has reportedly committed human rights abuses, including killing civilians and carrying out looting,” the international body said.
It added that the U.N. Human Rights Office “has also received information, which it has not been able to verify, concerning the presence of Eritrean troops in Tigray, their involvement in the hostilities and related serious violations of international law.”
The U.N. Human Rights Office has been unable to verify reports of alleged human rights violations on the ground in Tigray due to an ongoing communications blackout in the northern region that started on November 4. While some telephone lines have since been restored in certain areas, internet connections remain down across Tigray.
“Since fighting flared up in Tigray, more than 54,500 refugees have fled the Tigray region into Sudan,” the spokesperson for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Andrej Mahecic, told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday.
Selected „No-Empathy & compassion from Westerners“ Comments – even on Christmas Day:
“The Ethiopian army and regional Amhara forces and militia thenreportedly took control of Humera, allegedly killing civilians andlooting the hospital, banks, businesses, supermarkets, and privatehouses.”
They act the same as the Blacks do in the United States: Kill and loot. What can „you expect from low-IQ people?„
„The more Black a society, the less safe and prosperous it is.„
„Black lives don’t matter to blacks.„
„So sad please stay we’re you are and make your country better the west is full.„
„Talk to those who live in Maine about what a large influx of ” African refugees” can do to your state. Even San Antonio was smart enough to put them on buses to get them out of Texas when Africans stormed our southern border demanding asylum-„
„I think Ilhan Omar should go to the town of Adigrat for a month or two and give us an eyewitness report.„
„The U.N. exists to dump tens of millions of illiterate,diseased ,impoverished denizens of the third world on the U.,S taxpayers….for life…„
„Send Mike and Barrack over there to save them„
Just one sane comment:
„I am a white conservative American but my fellow white Americans just don’t get it. AFRICAN don’t pose a threat to America as much as the CHINESE and vast influx of MEXICANS. You guys always focus on the wrong people.„
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Addis Ethiopia Weblog 