The United States has ordered all soldiers from Eritrea to leave Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region “immediately.”
The Eritreans have been fighting on the side of Ethiopian government forces as they pursue “fugitive leaders” of the Tigray region, though Ethiopia’s government has denied their presence.
Witnesses who fled the Tigray region have said Eritrean troops were going house-to-house killing young men, looting, and acting as local authorities.
The US State Department in a statement cites “credible reports of looting, sexual violence, assaults in refugee camps and other human rights abuses.
“There is also evidence of Eritrean soldiers forcibly returning Eritrean refugees from Tigray to Eritrea,” it adds.
The statement also calls for an independent and transparent investigation into the alleged abuses.
“It remains unclear how many Eritrean soldiers are in Tigray, or precisely where,” it says.
It was not immediately clear whether the U.S. has addressed its demand directly to Eritrean officials or the office of Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.
Witnesses have estimated that the Eritrean soldiers number in the thousands. However, the Information Minister for Eritrea, Yemane G. Meskel, tweeted earlier this week that “the rabid defamation campaign against Eritrea is on the rise again
“The purveyors of incessant/recycled disinformation are usual culprits: at the forefront is Human Rights Watch”
The US also made it clear in the statement that it seeks an immediate stop to the fighting in Tigray and “full, safe and unhindered humanitarian access” to the region, which remains largely cut off from the outside world.
“We are gravely concerned by credible reports that hundreds of thousands of people may starve to death if urgent humanitarian assistance is not mobilized immediately.”
The statement added that “dialogue is essential between the government and Tigrayans.”
The Ethiopian government has rejected dialogue with the former Tigray leaders, seeing them as illegitimate, and have appointed an interim administration in place of the “fugitive” leaders.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government declared victory in its conflict with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), a political party that previously governed the province, on November 28 after it regained control of the region’s capital, Mekelle.
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The fighting started after the TPLF allegedly attacked federal military bases at multiple locations in the region.
The former Tigray leaders also objected to the Ethiopia government delaying a national election last year because of the COVID-19 pandemic and considered Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s mandate over.
The conflict has driven tens of thousands of Ethiopian refugees to cross into neighbouring Sudan.
The United Nations in its latest humanitarian update said it is receiving reports of “rising hunger” in Tigray and cited a “dire lack of access to food” since many farmers in the largely agricultural region missed the harvest because of the fighting.
It added that transport, electricity, banking and other links “have yet to be restored in much of the region,” and “78% of hospitals remain dysfunctional.”
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