Grave concerns over 'dire' and deteriorating situation in war-torn Tigray region

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Written by northsouth

Category: Africa

Published: 29 May 2021

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NEW YORK - UN humanitarians expressed deep concern on Friday about serious and ongoing abuses carried out against displaced civilians who are also facing dire food insecurity in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, after months of conflict.

In an alert, the UN sexual and reproductive health agency, UNFPA, said that it was aware of “gross violations”, including gender-based violence in the war-torn north.

Vile attacks

“The situation of women and adolescent girls in Tigray and border areas of Amhara and Afar remains dire”, said UNFPA Executive Director Natalia Kanem. “We see alarming levels of sexual violence, and thousands of women lack access to health and protection services.”

In a related development, the Office of the High Commissioner for refugee agency (UNHCR) condemned the reported abduction of “at least several hundred” youths from camps for displaced people in Tigray earlier this week.

This echoed prior comments by the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Ethiopia, Catherine Sozi, who condemned the reported arbitrary arrests, beatings and ill-treatment by soldiers of more than 200 people during night-time military raids on internal displacement camps in the region on Monday.

Ms. Sozi noted that the affected sites of Tsehaye and Adi Wonfito in Shire town were home to 12,000 internally displaced persons in total.

Trauma and distress

“The situation is traumatic and distressing, not only for the relatives of the missing, but for all the displaced communities residing in Shire”, UNHCR spokesperson Babar Baloch told journalists in Geneva, adding that the agency was in contact with the Ethiopian authorities on the issue. “It is crucial that all parties to the conflict recognize the civilian and humanitarian character of these sites hosting displaced people”.

Fighting began in Tigray on 4 November last year between national Government forces and regional power brokers loyal to the former national ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front.

Needs are growing

Some parts of the war-torn region have remained accessible but overall, “grave” needs are outstripping capacity, with most rural areas “cut from communications and electricity”, according to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

The Central Area – which is the most populated, with some 1.8 million people –remains largely inaccessible, Ms. Sozi’s team noted.

If nothing is done to improve aid access immediately, UN humanitarians believe that there is a high risk of mass severe acute malnutrition looming in the next few months.

Characterizing the situation as “complex and unpredictable”, OCHA said that civilians, who continue to bear the brunt of the conflict, have been forced to move to towns including Shire, Axum and Adwa.

“The main road between Adigrat and Axum was blocked from 10 to 22 April due to hostilities, impacting several humanitarian convoys, including emergency food aid, as well as the provision of medical supplies to Axum and Adwa Hospitals”, the UN humanitarian body reported.

Release call

In her appeal for the immediate release of those arbitrarily arrested from Shire’s displacement camps, Ms. Sozi said that serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law must be promptly investigated and the perpetrators brought to justice.
“We, along with our partners, are ready to engage with military commanders to ensure the protection of civilians”, the Humanitarian Coordinator said on Thursday.

Lava destroys homes in DR Congo after volcanic eruption

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Written by northsouth

Category: Africa

Published: 24 May 2021

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KINSHASA -  Lava from a volcanic eruption in DR Congo has destroyed homes on the outskirts of Goma but the city of two million has been mostly spared after thousands fled in the night.

Residents said there was little warning before the dark sky turned a fiery red, leading to fears that the eruption of Mount Nyiragongo could cause the same kind of devastation as the last time in 2002 when hundreds died.

There was no official word on deaths or injuries amid the scramble to flee the city late on Saturday.

The UN peacekeeping mission said that it did not appear the lava was flowing towards Goma based on reconnaissance flights but untold thousands still set off in search of safety.

Some boarded boats on to Lake Kivu while others attempted to reach Mount Goma, the highest point in the area. At least 3,000 fled across the nearby border into Rwanda.

On Sunday, residents ventured out to assess the damage after a night of panic. Smoke rose from smouldering heaps of lava in the Buhene area near the city.

“We have seen the loss of almost an entire neighbourhood,” said Innocent Bahala Shamavu. “All the houses in Buhene neighbourhood were burned and that’s why we are asking all the provincial authorities and authorities at the national level as well as all the partners, all the people of good faith in the world, to come to the aid of this population.”

Elsewhere, witnesses said lava had engulfed a highway connecting Goma with the city of Beni. However, the airport appeared to be spared the same fate as 2002 when lava flowed on to the runways.

Goma is a regional hub for many humanitarian agencies in the region, as well as the UN peacekeeping mission known as MONUSCO.

While Goma is home to many UN peacekeepers and aid workers, much of surrounding eastern DR Congo is under threat from a myriad of armed groups vying for control of the region’s mineral resources.

Ethiopian army implicated in brutal war crime, Telegraph

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Written by northsouth

Category: Africa

Published: 21 February 2021

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LONDON - The ground of the Tigrayan village is soaked with blood and dozens of bodies lie strewn in the grass, according to a report by the British daily The Telegraph.

Groans can be heard from a seriously wounded man squirming on the floor between two corpses.

Chatting as they wander through the aftermath of what appears to be a mass execution of civilians in the Tigray region, soldiers laugh and joke among themselves.

Off to one side they spot a young man who seems to have survived by pretending to be dead.

“You should have finished off the survivors,” the cameraman says in Amharic, Ethiopia’s lingua franca, in an apparent rebuke of the perpetrators of the massacre.

These are scenes from a video clip obtained exclusively by The Telegraph showing the first evidence of what appears to be a war crime carried out by the Ethiopian army. Around 40 bodies in civilian clothes can be seen in the four-minute clip.

Ethiopian and Eritrean forces have for months been battling troops loyal to the former Tigrayan regional government in a war that has left thousands dead and millions on the brink of starvation.

The Ethiopian federal government has imposed a mass communications black-out in Tigray, meaning little is known about the conflict and making it hard to verify a flood of accounts of war crimes from survivors.

The video footage seen by The Telegraph, which is too graphic to publish, has circulated online in shorter form among local journalists and bloggers - deemed rare proof of the alleged brutality of Addis Ababa’s forces.

The Telegraph was able to geolocate the video to Debre Abay monastery in central Tigray - about 175 miles west of Tigray’s capital, Mekele. It has also confirmed that the clip has not been doctored.

Although the timing of the apparent massacre was not possible to ascertain, a pro-Tigrayan blog reported Ethiopian soldiers had killed 100 civilians at the same monastery on January 5.

Experts who were sent the footage called on the Ethiopian government to launch an immediate investigation.

“This is disturbing footage to watch and I would expect the Federal Government to allow the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission full access to establish the facts and to ensure that there is proper accountability for these killings" said Dr Alex Vines, Africa Director at Chatham House.

Ethiopia’s state-run Human Rights Commission (EHRC) confirmed to The Telegraph that they were examining the shorter clip of the massacre that has circulated online.

The video emerged after The Telegraph published dozens of Tigrayan refugees’ accounts of killings, artillery bombardment and looting in Tigray in November.

For the video and more information, visit: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/02/19/should-have-finished-survivors-ethiopian-army-implicated-brutal/?WT.mc_id=e_DM1339119&WT.tsrc=email&etype=Edi_FPM_New_ES&utmsource=email&utm_medium=Edi_FPM_New_ES20210219&utm_campaign=DM1339119