Nairobi, Dec 10, (dpa/GNA) – Tigrayan forces battling the central Ethiopian government in the country’s civil war, have been accused by Human Rights Watch (HRW) of carrying out summary executions of civilians in two towns located in the country’s Amhara region.
In a report published on Friday, the global rights NGO published eyewitness accounts of civilian executions it alleges, were carried out by Tigrayan forces battling the Ethiopian military between August 31 and September 9.
“On August 31, Tigrayan forces entered the village of Chenna and engaged in sporadic and at times heavy fighting with Ethiopian federal forces and allied Amhara militias,” the report said, adding that Chenna residents told HRW that over the next five days Tigrayan forces executed 26 civilians in 15 separate incidents, before withdrawing on September 4.
The report then detailed a similar case a few days later in another town in the region: “In the town of Kobo on September 9, Tigrayan forces summarily executed a total of 23 people in four separate incidents, witnesses said. The killings were in apparent retaliation for attacks by farmers on advancing Tigrayan forces earlier that day.”
An internally displaced person who fled Kobo to the safety of his relatives in the town of Kombolcha in mid-September told dpa by phone that he witnessed one such killing on the outskirts of the town.
“I was returning from a church service on September 12 when I saw at least eight Tigrayan fighters marching three men out of their homes,” Solomon Fikrealem said. “After a few minutes, we heard shooting. When we came out after the gunfire stopped, we saw three of the men dead on the side of the road.”
Commenting on the killings, Lama Fakih, crisis and conflict director at HRW, said Tigrayan forces showed brutal disregard for human life and international law by executing people in their custody.
“These killings and other atrocities by all sides to the conflict underscore the need for an independent international inquiry into alleged war crimes in Ethiopia’s Tigray and Amhara regions,” he said.
HRW further urged the United Nations Human Rights Council, to establish an international investigative mechanism into abuses by all parties in the expanded Tigray conflict.
Tigrayan officials have not so far responded to the HRW report, but have previously rejected all allegations of atrocities.
Ethiopia’s civil war, which started in November 2020, has led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people and displaced millions of others.
GNA