December 4 is a date that fills Mona Lisa Abraha with horror. It was then, the 18-year-old says, that Eritrean soldiers entered her village of Tembin in Ethiopia’s embattled region of Tigray.
“They tried to rape me and I was thrown to the ground. Then, one of the soldiers fired bullets to scare me, but they hit my hand and then fired another bullet that went through my arm, ”Abraha recalls from a hospital bed on the outskirts of Tigray’s capital, Mekelle.
“I was bleeding for hours. Then, I had my arm amputated, ”she says, before breaking down in tears.
Abraha's account is one of few emerging from the secretive conflict in Tigray, where communications were cut for many weeks and media access was severely curbed before being slightly eased recently. Al Jazeera has now gained rare access and heard from witnesses and survivors who allege they suffered serious abuses at the hands of Eritrean troops.
“I was bleeding for hours. Then, I had my arm amputated, ”she says, before breaking down in tears.
Abraha’s account is one of few emerging from the secretive conflict in Tigray, where communications were cut for many weeks and media access was severely curbed before being slightly eased recently. Al Jazeera has now gained rare access and heard from witnesses and survivors who allege they suffered serious abuses at the hands of Eritrean troops.
Last week, Amnesty International said in a report that hundreds of civilians were massacred by Eritrean soldiers in the town of Axum in November, amounting to “a series of human rights and humanitarian law violations”.
The massacre was committed in a “coordinated and systematic” manner in order “to terrorize the population into submission” and may amount to a crime against humanity, the report said.
Its findings were based on 41 interviews with witnesses and survivors of the massacre, all ethnic Tigrayans.
Jean-Baptiste Gallopin, author of the report, told Al Jazeera: “The Eritrean forces called [for] reinforcements and proceeded to shoot at civilians on the streets using sniper rifles and machine guns.”
Axum residents quoted in the Amnesty report identified the perpetrators as Eritrean soldiers, saying that they often rode in trucks with license plates reading “Eritrea”.
Witnesses said most wore a uniform and shoes easily distinguishable from those of Ethiopian soldiers. They remarked that the troops distinguished themselves as Eritrean when they spoke in a distinctive dialect with its own words and accent.
Some soldiers had three scars on each temple near the eye, identifying themselves as Beni-Amir, an ethnic group that straddles Sudan and Eritrea but is absent from Ethiopia, the report said.
Ethiopia’s government has questioned the accuracy of Amnesty’s sources, but says an investigation will be launched. The state-appointed Ethiopian Human Rights Commission also said that Amnesty’s report should be taken seriously and that preliminary investigations indicated that Eritrean soldiers had killed an unknown number of civilians in Axum.
But in a letter to Al Jazeera, Ethiopia’s ambassador to Qatar, Samia Zekaria Gutu, called the Amnesty report “cooked”.
“This kind of‘ report ’based on unreliable sources is known to have the risk of further reinforcing the misinformation and propaganda by [the] TPLF criminal click,” Gutu wrote.
Eritrea’s Information Minister Yemane Meskel rejected Amnesty’s “preposterous accusations”.
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