MEKELE, Ethiopia (AP) — Women who make it to the clinic for sex abuse survivors in the northern Ethiopian region of Tigray usually struggle to describe their injuries.
Despite claims by both Ethiopia and Eritrea that they were leaving, Eritrean soldiers are in fact more firmly entrenched than ever in Tigray, where they are brutally gang-raping women, killing civilians, looting hospitals and blocking food and medical aid, The Associated Press has found.
Multiple witnesses, survivors of rape, officials and aid workers said Eritrean soldiers have been spotted far from the border, deep in eastern and even southern Tigray, sometimes clad in faded Ethiopian army fatigues.
They see the Eritreans’ menace everywhere: the sacked homes, the murdered sons, the violated daughters, even the dried turds deposited in everything from cooking utensils to the floor of an X-ray room in one vandalized hospital.
Two sources with ties to the government told the AP that Eritrea is in charge in parts of Tigray, and there is fear that it is dealing directly with ethnic Amhara militias and bypassing federal authorities altogether.
Eritrea’s longtime president, Isaias Afwerki, seeks a buffer zone along the border to foil any attempts by Tigray’s now-fugitive leaders to make a comeback, especially by resupplying their arsenal through Sudan, Berhane said.
Gebremeskel Hagos, a mournful-looking man in a Mekele camp for the displaced, recalled how Eritrean and Ethiopian troops sang as they entered the ancestral home of a former Tigrayan leader in a village near Adigrat in January.
The original article contains 2,218 words, the summary contains 220 words. Saved 90%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Despite claims by both Ethiopia and Eritrea that they were leaving, Eritrean soldiers are in fact more firmly entrenched than ever in Tigray, where they are brutally gang-raping women, killing civilians, looting hospitals and blocking food and medical aid, The Associated Press has found.
Multiple witnesses, survivors of rape, officials and aid workers said Eritrean soldiers have been spotted far from the border, deep in eastern and even southern Tigray, sometimes clad in faded Ethiopian army fatigues.
They see the Eritreans’ menace everywhere: the sacked homes, the murdered sons, the violated daughters, even the dried turds deposited in everything from cooking utensils to the floor of an X-ray room in one vandalized hospital.
Two sources with ties to the government told the AP that Eritrea is in charge in parts of Tigray, and there is fear that it is dealing directly with ethnic Amhara militias and bypassing federal authorities altogether.
Eritrea’s longtime president, Isaias Afwerki, seeks a buffer zone along the border to foil any attempts by Tigray’s now-fugitive leaders to make a comeback, especially by resupplying their arsenal through Sudan, Berhane said.
Gebremeskel Hagos, a mournful-looking man in a Mekele camp for the displaced, recalled how Eritrean and Ethiopian troops sang as they entered the ancestral home of a former Tigrayan leader in a village near Adigrat in January.
The original article contains 2,218 words, the summary contains 220 words. Saved 90%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!