'I saw people dying on the road': Tigray's traumatised war refugees (original) (raw)
When Ethiopia’s army shelled Humera, a small agricultural city in Tigray, in mid-November, 54-year-old Gush Tela rushed his wife and three children to safety in a nearby town.
A few days later, he felt compelled to find out what had become of his home. As he approached the city on his motorbike, riding through the arid countryside, he said the stench of countless dead bodies filled the air.
Men, women and children lay strewn along the road and in the surrounding fields, their bodies riddled with bullet holes, Tela said.
“I saw many dead people being eaten by dogs,” Tela said from a refugee camp just over the border in Sudan, his voice breaking. “I saw many people dying on the road. Many difficult things, difficult to express, difficult to imagine.”
Tigray was plunged into conflict on 4 November, when Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, ordered a military campaign against the region’s ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. Abiy accused the TPLF attacking federal military camps in Tigray and seeking to destabilise the country, which the TPLF denies.
Accounts have emerged of appalling violence committed by multiple actors on both sides of the conflict, but with communications down and the media barred, it has been impossible to independently verify incidents – and who was responsible.
A bus carrying refugees breaks down near Hamdayet. Photograph: Ed Ram
On Wednesday, the United Nations said it and Ethiopia’s government had signed a deal to allow “unimpeded” humanitarian access to Tigray – at least the parts now under federal government control. The aid may come too late for some. For weeks, the UN and others have pleaded for access amid reports of food, medicines and other supplies running out for millions of people.
Before the conflict, the worsening political tensions between Addis Ababa and the TPLF seemed remote to Tela. “I was searching only for work. I was not much interested in the political process. I knew nothing about what was happening,” he said. “I never felt this situation would ever happen.”
Faint outlines of Tigrayan buildings and telephone towers break through the milky sky in Hamdayet, the small, impoverished Sudanese border town where Tela and 3,000 other refugees are encamped. They are among more 45,000 who have fled the violence, travelling for days through woods and over the Sittet River to the safety of Sudan. A second camp has sprung up in Um Raquba.
Many of the refugees nurse multiple diseases, often picked up on the days-long, gruelling journey. Clinics at the two camps are struggling to provide necessary care. Those who have made it tell of desperate people who were left behind, blocked by federal Ethiopian forces.
At the weekend, federal troops took over the Tigrayan capital, Mekelle, and officials in Addis Ababa said that military operations were complete. The TPLF, which had dominated Ethiopia’s governing coalition for decades before Abiy came to power in 2018, appears to have retreated, signalling the end of battlefield clashes for now, though experts warn federal forces could face a lengthy insurgency.
About 600,000 people in Tigray were already dependent on food aid even before the conflict, including more than 100,000 refugees from Eritrea. The UN had warned of the risk of people starving in the coming days unless access was permitted.
People fill water bottles in a settlement near Hamdayet. Photograph: Ed Ram
Isolated Sudanese towns in one of the poorest regions on Earth have opened their homes to their neighbours, yet the pressures are acute. A transitional government in place since the ousting of Omar al-Bashir last year is struggling to contend with discontent over a worsening economy and shortages off essential supplies.
Before the influx of refugees, the region was already in major need of support and development, according to Imad Aoun from Médecins Sans Frontières. “It’s almost two crisis on top of each other,” he said. “We are trying to mitigate some of this, on the one hand providing support to those who are coming, and supporting the local system.”
Reports of atrocities have fuelled the conflict, which may stoke ethnic and other tensions across Africa’s second most populous country. In one of the worst incidents, Amnesty International reported that scores, possibly hundreds, of civilians were massacred with knives and machetes in a town south of Humera in early November. Witnesses told Amnesty that forces loyal to the TPLF were to blame, though Amnesty said it had not been able to independently confirm responsibility.
Tela moves gingerly, and has bandages wrapped around his calves and wrists. He said federal soldiers had found him in Humera and beaten him until he was covered in blood and could not walk, then passed him over to a brutal militia force of ethnic Amharans called the Fano. He said the Fano had been tasked with destroying the city and “finishing” Tigrayans.
Refugees queue for food distribution at the Um Raquba settlement. Photograph: Ed Ram
The Fano had taken over a judicial court in Humera. Barely mobile and gushing blood, Tela said he was allowed to heave himself away. Gesturing a knife to his neck, he said he saw a man in his 30s beheaded with machetes.
Refugees in the camp reel off accounts of horror they either witnessed themselves or heard from others. In a makeshift ward in a room near the back of the camp, some show wounds they say were caused by knife and machete attacks by Fano militia.
For the last month, Tefera Tedros, a 42-year-old surgeon, has seen the results of the violence up close. Before war broke out he divided his time between a government hospital and a private clinic. “It was very successful,” he said. “I was maintaining [a good life], sending my kids to school, and all the basic necessities. Now everything is gone.”
Tedros said his hospital in Humera received 15 dead civilians on the first day of shelling on 8 November. “But those who were not brought to the hospital, who died on the streets or at home, were uncountable,” he said.
Men shaving near the Um Raquba camp. Photograph: Ed Ram
With colleagues, he desperately loaded critical patients into tractors borrowed from people nearby, and drove them to the bigger town of Adwa, as ammunition ricocheted around the city. Then he fled into the woods and eventually made it to Hamdayet.
He is the only doctor at one of two clinics at the camp, working around the clock. “It’s been 10 days working, 24 hours [a day]. This clinic was meant to service not more than 50 patients a day, at the maximum. Now we’re serving 200 patients,” he said. “We’re running out of drugs every time, so we’re using secondary options, tertiary options. Not the drugs that we need but the drugs that we have.”
Tedros said the journey to Hamdayet had taken a severe toll on many in the camp. “Respiratory illnesses are very common now because people have walked long distances that were full of dust and were sleeping on the ground with no sheet, mattress, nothing. Most of them have infections of the lung.”
Abdominal and skin diseases are common among refugees too. “We were drinking from ponds, just on the side of cattle,” he said.
Aid agencies have stepped in to provide vital drugs and care, yet this was not enough, he said. The are people suffering with diabetes, HIV and cancer in the camp who aren’t accessing treatment.
Women’s reproductive health needs are also dangerously unmet. Twenty pregnant women were due to give birth soon in Hamdayet, Tedros said. At the Um Raqaba camp, a 26-year-old refugee told UNFPA officials late last month that she began menstruating on the day she arrived, and had sold her phone to buy underwear cotton and soap.
People queue for food distribution at the Um Raqaba settlement. Photograph: Ed Ram
Despite the horrors they recount, many of the refugees are anxious to return, hoping they will not have to leave for good. They are sensitive to any resentment or criticism of Tigray’s leadership.
Ngisti Yohans, 27, fled with her son after hearing reports of Tigrayans being raped by militias. She accused Abiy of exploiting ethnic divisions and fuelling resentment. “It is purely ethnic,” she said. “The country was fair but Abiy wanted all the power. The government made it seem that the problems with Ethiopia were because of Tigray.”
The rest of her family remains in Tigray. “My life is there, my family,” she said. “I’m just waiting to see if things improve.”