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After seizing the farming village in northern Ethiopia, rebels scoured the streets in search of able-bodied young men who had fought alongside government forces.
Anyone with a militia ID card was a suspect. The same is true for men with shoulder marks left by their rifle straps, although it is common for farmers in Ethiopia’s Amhara region – militiamen or not – to wear Kalashnikovs.
By the end of the day, the rebels had shot dead two men in their homes and marched a third to a nearby river where they fired bullets in the back, according to Adisse Wonde, 49, who told the AFP have buried the three.
“They want to suppress us and rule us. Their act is ethnic cleansing,” Adisse said of rebels from Ethiopia’s northernmost region, Tigray.
The alleged killings earlier this month in the village of Hara are just one example of gruesome abuse described by witnesses to the war that is spreading in Ethiopia.
Amhara forces recruits learn to dig trenches, use grenades, and assemble a rifle. By EDUARDO SOTERAS (AFP) Long confined to Tigray, the conflict has recently spread to two neighboring regions, Afar and Amhara, with heavy weapons fire killing countless civilians and displacing hundreds of thousands more.
The rebels, known as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Tigray (TPLF), dismissed allegations that they committed atrocities as “baseless” pro-government propaganda.
Yet the newly displaced civilians in Amhara tell a different story.
They accuse TPLF fighters of murder, widespread looting and indiscriminate bombardment of civilian areas.
“We don’t know who is alive”
Northern Ethiopia has been ravaged by violence since November, when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sent troops to Tigray to overthrow the then ruling TPLF.
The 2019 Nobel Peace Prize laureate said the move came in response to TPLF attacks on army camps and promised an early victory.
Instead, however, Tigray has engulfed itself in a bitter war marked by massacres and mass rapes.
Muchayu Degin, a farmer and mother of seven, was forced into hiding in her home for a week as the fighting raged. By EDUARDO SOTERAS (AFP) At the end of June, the TPLF stunned the world by recapturing the regional capital Mekele, then pushed into Amhara and Afar, vowing to end what it describes as a humanitarian blockade of Tigray and prevent pro-Abiy forces from regroup.
TPLF advance forced Muchayu Degin, a 55-year-old mother of seven in northern Amhara town of Kobo, to hide in her home for a week, shaking with fear as the gunfire approached artillery.
Hungry and desperate, she finally found the courage to flee on foot with her family, walking 3 hours south on roads strewn with bodies riddled with bullets.
Eventually she reached the town of Woldiya, then found transportation further south to the town of Dessie, a booming hub for newly displaced people.
Displaced civilians depend on food and handouts from local residents. By EDUARDO SOTERAS (AFP) Like thousands of other survivors, she now sleeps on a thin carpet in a crowded primary school classroom, depending on food and other gifts from local residents.
It’s been a month since she fled and she still hasn’t managed to reach the nieces and nephews she left behind at Kobo.
“There is no network there,” she said, tears streaming down her cheeks. “We don’t know who is alive or not.”
No mood for discussions
Ethiopia. By Simon MALFATTO (AFP) The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, a government-affiliated but independent body, said this week it was deploying a new mission to investigate reports of attacks on civilians in Amhara, including a recent bombing that killed five members of the same family, the youngest victim just four months old.
The TPLF supports the investigations but says they must be independent and led by the UN.
Meanwhile, the fighting drags on, with a recent internal EU document seen by AFP identifying four different fronts in Amhara.
Aid workers warn that hostilities will only worsen the humanitarian consequences of a conflict which the United Nations says has already driven hundreds of thousands of people to Tigray in conditions bordering on famine.
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is now providing food to more than 136,000 people “affected by the conflict” in Amhara and Afar, her boss Samantha Power said this week, while calling on the TPLF to withdraw from the war. two regions and to negotiate.
So far, however, neither side really seems in the mood for a discussion.
People sign up for food distribution in Dessie. By EDUARDO SOTERAS (AFP) In Dessie, local officials continue to defend a military solution to the war while accusing the United States and other world powers of downplaying – or even outright ignoring – TPLF abuses.
“Foreign forces are also fighting against us, including America and other foreign countries who are supporting this war from behind inappropriately,” said Seid Mohammed Hussien, administrator of the South Wollo area, of which Dessie is the most big city.
“All Ethiopians know this clearly.”
“Join in the back!” ”
Far from arousing appeals for peace among the general population, the accounts of civil suffering encourage the inhabitants of Dessie to take up arms.
“People are displaced from their homes, including children and the elderly. When you see this, it motivates you to go and fight,” Mohammed Kedir told AFP after completing a 20-day training course to join. Amhara security forces. where he learned to dig a trench, use a grenade, and assemble and disassemble a rifle.
At a graduation ceremony this week, Mohammed and his fellow rookies sang patriotic songs and danced in a circle, some of them hoisting Kalashnikovs with miniature Ethiopian flags stuck in the barrels.
“Join in the back!” They shouted at one point, using a derogatory term for the TPLF. “Amhara up front!”
Tales of civilian suffering prompt many Amhara residents to take up arms. By EDUARDO SOTERAS (AFP) Rookie Tesfaye Abeba told AFP he was keen to avenge what he called TPLF crimes.
“I have to protect women and children,” he said. “I am ready to go.”
Such words bring some comfort to displaced Amharas like Yemisarach Bezabeh, who fled his hometown of Mersa and has spent the last few days in Dessie struggling to find rice and flour to feed her three children.
Day and night, she said, her family dreams of returning to their house, assuming she is still up.
“The children are asking to go home. They are asking to see their grandparents” who are staying in Mersa, she said.
“I just want to go back to our country.”
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