Witnesses accuse Tigray fighters of Kobo killings

Northern Ethiopia has been racked by more than 10 months of war that has left thousands dead.

One man said he counted 55 corpses as he escaped from his town in northern Ethiopia, stepping over bodies scattered in the streets. Another asserted he was rounded up with about 20 men who were shot in front of him. Yet others claimed Tigray forces went door-to-door killing men and teenage boys.

The allegations from the town of Kobo are the latest against Tigray forces as they push through the neighbouring Amhara region, in what they call an attempt to pressure Ethiopia’s government to end a 10-month war and lift a deadly blockade on their own home. Both Amhara and Tigrayan civilians have joined the fight, and calls by the United States and others for peace have had little effect as war spreads in one of Africa’s most powerful countries.

The accounts from Kobo are the most extensive yet of one of the deadliest known killings of Amhara in the war. The estimates of deaths there range from the dozens to the hundreds; it is not clear how many were killed in all or how many were fighters as opposed to civilians, a line that is becoming increasingly blurred.

The Associated Press news agency spoke with more than a dozen witnesses who were in Kobo during the killings, along with others who have family there. They said the fighting started on September 9 as a battle but quickly turned against civilians. At first, Tigray forces who had taken over the area in July fought farmers armed with rifles. But after the Tigray forces briefly lost and regained control of the town, they went door-to-door killing in retaliation, the witnesses said.

“We did our best, whether we die or kill, but what is heartbreaking is the massacre of innocent civilians,” said one wounded resident, Kassahun, who was armed. Like others who spoke to the AP after fleeing, he gave only his first name to protect family members still in town.

His account was echoed by a health worker who gave first aid to several wounded people. The health worker said Tigray forces withdrew from Kobo on the afternoon of September 9 and returned several hours later, once local militia units had run out of ammunition and retreated.

“Then the killing started,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

The area of fighting is under a communications blackout, complicating efforts to verify accounts. Calls to the local administrator went unanswered. Ethiopia’s state-appointed Human Rights Commission this week said it had received “disturbing reports” of alleged “deliberate attacks against civilians in Kobo town and surrounding rural towns by TPLF fighters”.

The acronym stands for the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, which dominated Ethiopia’s repressive national government for 27 years but was sidelined by current Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. What began as a political dispute erupted into war in November in the Tigray region, with thousands killed.

Senait Ambaw, left, who said her home had been destroyed by artillery, leaves by foot along a path near the village of Chenna Teklehaymanot, in the Amhara region of northern Ethiopia [File: AP]

While atrocities have been reported on all sides, the worst massacres recounted by witnesses have been against the civilians of Tigray, along with gang rapes and deliberate starvation. They were blamed on the Ethiopian government, Amhara fighters and Eritrean soldiers.

However, since the Tigray forces in June retook much of their region and entered Amhara, accusations have been piling up against them, too. Amhara civilians in multiple communities have alleged that the Tigray fighters are killing them in retaliation, as the war grows bigger and more complex.

Most allegations cannot be verified immediately, given a lack of access. But in September, the AP reached the scene of an alleged massacre in Chenna Teklehaymanot, where at least dozens of Amhara were reported killed, both fighters and civilians. The AP saw bodies scattered on the muddy ground, some in the uniforms of fighters and others in civilian clothing, and residents alleged at least 59 people were buried in a nearby churchyard.

The Tigray forces have denied targeting civilians. Tigray forces spokesman Getachew Reda told the AP that the accounts from Kobo “are just a figment of someone’s imagination. There was no such thing as our forces going in every house and targeting civilians.” He blamed local [fighters], “irregular units,” and said that “people who were hiding their guns” joined them.

“They fought and our forces had to fight back,” Getachew said. Asked about the calls for peace, he said “this cessation of hostilities thing needs to be taken seriously, but it takes two to tango,” referring to Ethiopia’s government.

As in Tigray, civilians are caught in the middle.

One resident, Mengesha, said he counted 55 corpses in the town. It was not clear whether they were of fighters or unarmed civilians. “I escaped by stepping over the dead bodies,” he said. Like other witnesses, he fled to Dessie town 165km (103 miles) to the south.

Birhanu, a farmer, said he and his friend were walking home on September 9 when they were rounded up with about 20 other men.

“They were shot in front of us,” he said. “The fighters took us to their camp and made us line up and then picked who would be shot. I managed to run away with my friend.”

He said the Tigray fighters fired at them as they fled, severing two fingers on his right hand.

Another resident, Molla, said he bandaged his wounds with grass and walked for days to safety.

“[The Tigray forces] were indiscriminately killing people, especially men,” he said. “They dragged them out and killed them while their mothers were crying. They killed my uncle and his son-in-law on his doorstep.”

A third resident, Ayene, said he watched out a window as fighters took his three brothers out of their nearby home and shot them on the street at point-blank range, along with four others.

“Then the fighters called me outside to shoot me, but luckily a woman intervened and I was saved,” he said. “There were so many bodies, I lost my mind.”

Before fleeing, Kobo residents said they spent days recovering bodies. One shop assistant, Tesfaye, said he locked himself inside his house, and then counted 50 bodies once the firing stopped.

“I saw many of my friends who were dead on the street,” he said. “I was just crying, then I went to bury them.”

Villagers carry wood on a path near the village of Chenna Teklehaymanot [File: AP]

SOURCE: AP

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Suicide bomber kills at least eight in Somali capital

The attack targeting a convoy going into the presidential palace is claimed by the armed group al-Shabab.

A suicide car bomb blast has killed at least eight people at a security checkpoint near the presidential palace in the Somali capital, in an attack claimed by the al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab group.

The checkpoint falls on the route to the airport in Mogadishu, used by Somalia’s president and prime minister.

Police spokesman Abdifatah Aden Hassan told reporters at the scene the number of casualties in Saturday’s attack could be higher as some of the dead and wounded were taken away by relatives after the attack targeting a convoy going into the palace.

“Al-Shabab is behind the blast. They killed eight people including a soldier and a mother and two children. Al-Shabab massacres civilians,” he said.

In a brief statement, the group confirmed it was behind the bombing.

“The mujahideen carried [out] a martyrdom operation targeting the main security checkpoint of the presidential palace,” it said.

Al-Shabab, which wants to overthrow the government and impose its interpretation of Islamic law, frequently carries out such bombings.

“We have confirmed that eight people, most of them civilians, died and seven others wounded in the car bomb blast,” district police chief Mucawiye Ahmed Mudey said.

‘Martyrdom operation’

Al-Shabab controlled the capital until 2011 when it was pushed out by African Union troops, but it still holds territory in the countryside and launches frequent attacks against government and civilian targets in Mogadishu and elsewhere.

A witness on Saturday said the car bomb was detonated when police stopped the driver for a security check.

“They normally stop to check and clear vehicles before they can pass by the checkpoint. This car was stopped by the security guards and it went off while there were several other cars and people passing by the nearby road. I saw wounded and dead people being carried,” said witness Mohamed Hassan.

Government spokesman Mohamed Ibrahim Moalimuu said among those killed was Hibaq Abukar, a women and human rights affairs adviser in Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble’s office.

“She was one of the pillars of PM’s office [for] women affairs,” he said on his Facebook page.

Roble condemned the attack and paid tribute to Abukar, whom he called “a young hard-working vibrant girl with honesty” as well as a “devoted citizen.”

“We have to cooperate in the fight against the ruthless terrorists who regularly kill our people,” he added.

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New York hospitals, schools fear staff shortages over vaccine rules

Health care workers in the state and teachers in NYC have until Sept. 27 to get the COVID-19 shot.

NEW YORK (AP) — Some of the nation’s most aggressive COVID-19 vaccine mandates are scheduled to take effect Monday in New York amid continued resistance from some to the shots, leaving hospitals and nursing homes across the state and schools in New York City bracing for possible staff shortages.

Many health care workers, including support staff such as cleaners, have still not yet received a required first shot of the COVID-19 vaccine days before a Sept. 27 deadline. That’s the same deadline for teachers and school workers in New York City to prove they’ve received at least one shot.

That left the prospect of potentially thousands of health care workers and teachers being forced off the job next week.

Despite calls from unions and administrators to delay the mandates, Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio showed no signs of backing down.

“Every single person who is in your care has the right to know that there is no chance they will be infected by the person in charge of protecting them and their health,” Hochul, a Democrat, said Thursday.

Hospitals and nursing homes were preparing contingency plans that included cutting back on elective surgeries and, at one hospital, halting maternity services. Nursing homes were limiting admissions. The state’s largest health care provider, Northwell Health, was keeping thousands of volunteers on standby.

MARY ALTAFFER VIA AP

In this July 22, 2021, file photo, health care worker fills a syringe with the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

“We would like to see some more time to be able to comply and implement the vaccine mandate, because at the end of the day it’s a situation where we’re very concerned about our ability to care for the patients,” said Tom Quatroche, CEO of the Erie County Medical Center Corporation, which operates a busy 573-bed hospital in Buffalo.

It anticipates that about 10% of its workforce, or 400 staff members, might still be unvaccinated Monday. Under a contingency plan, the hospital said it would suspend elective inpatient surgeries, temporarily stop accepting ICU transfers from other institutions and reduce hours at clinics.

New York is not the only state to require health care workers to get vaccinated. But it has been especially aggressive in pushing for wider vaccinations to help limit the spread of the virus.

The mayor and governor said workers had plenty of time to get the shots. The mandate for state health care workers was announced this summer. New York City announced in July that its teachers would need to either get vaccinated or tested for COVID-19 weekly, but it then revoked the test-out option in August.

While most school workers have been vaccinated, inducing nearly 90% of teachers as of Thursday, unions representing New York City principals and teachers warned that could still leave the 1 million student school system short of as many as 10,000 teachers, along with other staff such as cafeteria workers and school police officers.

Those who don’t provide proof of a shot by the end of Monday will not be allowed to return to classrooms Tuesday, which will leave principals scrambling overnight to make sure they have enough substitutes, educators warned.

The unions said that while they’ve encouraged everyone to get vaccinated, some schools could be dangerously low on staff Tuesday. They pleaded for the mayor to delay the mandate after a judge refused to halt the rule.

“We are concerned. Very, very concerned,” United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew said.

Mark Cannizzaro, the president of the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, said some schools have as many as 100 staff members not in compliance.

De Blasio insisted the city was ready.

“We’ve been planning all along. We have a lot of substitutes ready,” the Democrat said in a radio interview on Friday. “A lot is going to happen between now and Monday but beyond that, we are ready, even to the tune of, if we need thousands, we have thousands.”

The mandate for health care workers comes as hospitals are already reeling from staff shortages due in part to rising demand, workers retiring and weary employees seeking other jobs after 18 months of the pandemic.

There is one option for health care workers who don’t want to get the shot, which is to apply for a religious exemption. That would buy them until at least Oct. 12, while a federal judge considers a legal challenge arguing that such exemptions are constitutionally required.

Meanwhile, a state judge in Albany agreed to set aside a Monday deadline for court employees to get a first vaccine shot and would hear arguments next week on whether to extend the stay. The CSEA, which represents 5,800 workers, argued that the mandate should have been negotiated and not imposed unilaterally by the court system.

Earlier, another judge threw out a last-minute effort Friday by seven health care workers and Republican Niagara County legislator John Syracuse to delay the health care mandate.

With time ticking down on the health care mandate, Northwell Health was trying to persuade thousands of holdouts to get vaccinated, including individual meetings with staffers. The system’s personnel chief, Maxine Carrington, said they’re seeing a lot more appointments being scheduled.

“I’ve had personal conversations with team members, and I was asked by one: ‘Are you really going to fire us on the 27th?’ And I said, let’s put that aside for a minute and let’s talk about saving your life. Why don’t you want to get vaccinated?” Carrington said.

She said staff that refuse the inoculations will “no longer be qualified for employment.”

As of Thursday, about 90% of Northwell’s 74,000 active personnel had been vaccinated. Still, the hospital system acknowledged that it did not expect full compliance and had more than 3,000 retirees, volunteers and health care students on standby, should they be needed.

The University of Rochester Medical Center, in the state’s fourth largest city, announced a two-week pause in scheduling new elective procedures at its Strong Memorial Hospital beginning Monday. It also is temporarily closing two urgent care centers.

One wild card is no one knows if a burst of health care workers will simply wait until the last minute to get a jab.

One hopeful sign: New York-Presbyterian, one of the state’s largest hospital systems, had imposed an earlier vaccination deadline on its workers — midnight Wednesday — and reported fewer than 250 of its 48,000 staffers had failed to comply.

Spokesperson Alexandra Langan said in an email: “For those who chose not to comply, they will not continue to work at NYP.”

New York state has been averaging just under 5,000 new COVID-19 cases per day with around 2,300 people hospitalized. That’s far worse than in late June, when around 300 people were testing positive each day statewide.

Hill reported from Albany. Associated Press writer Marina Villeneuve, in Albany, contributed to this report.

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NBA fines Warriors owner Lacob $50,000 for Simmons comments

NEW YORK (AP) — The NBA fined Golden State Warriors owner Joe Lacob $50,000 for violating the league’s anti-tampering rule with comments he made about Philadelphia 76ers guard Ben Simmons.

Lacob said the Warriors had no interest in the disgruntled Sixers guard.

“In some ways, it doesn’t really fit what we’re doing,” Lacob said this week. “He makes a lot of money. And, can he finish games? I don’t know.

“He’s very talented. The problem is: We have Draymond (Green). Draymond and him are very similar in the sense that neither one really shoots and they do a lot of the playmaking. That’s one issue. The salary structure is another.”

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US Vice President Harris almost walked into COVID contact at ABC Studios

NEW YORK (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris’ live interview on “The View” was abruptly delayed Friday after two hosts of the talk show learned they had tested positive for COVID-19 moments before Harris was to join them on the set.

Cohost Sunny Hostin and guest host Ana Navarro were at the table for the start of the show, but then were told to step off the set. Hostin and Navarro had been vaccinated, their colleagues said.

Harris, who was to be seated there as well, instead was later interviewed remotely from a different room in the ABC studio in New York. She did not have any contact with either host who tested positive, according to a White House official.

Cohosts Joy Behar and Sara Haines remained on set and conducted the truncated interview.

“Sunny and Ana are strong women and I know they are fine,” said Harris when she made her delayed appearance. “But it also really does speak to the fact that they are vaccinated and vaccines make all the difference because otherwise we’d be concerned about hospitalization and worse.”

The moment underscored the ever-present dangers of COVID-19 and provided a sobering reminder of the virus’ reach.

It also threatened to overshadow the Biden administration’s efforts to show progress in battling the virus. Just a few hours earlier, President Joe Biden urged those now eligible for COVID-19 booster shots to get the added protection a day after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention endorsed the doses for millions of older or otherwise vulnerable Americans.

“Ana and Sunny, at the last minute we realized they have tested positive for COVID so they have been taken off of the show,” said a stunned Behar, who made the announcement after the show hurriedly went to a commercial when the two hosts were pulled off seat. Behar said Harris was removed to a separate location because “they don’t want to take a chance.”

“It’s very important we keep her healthy and safe,” Behar said. “The Secret Service is doing things to make her feel safe.”

Both the show and aides from the vice president’s office wanted to go ahead with the interview and contact tracing was quickly done to make sure Harris would not be exposed to anyone who might have had contact with Navarro and Hostin, officials said. The Secret Service then signed off on using a separate location in the studio.

The vice president carried on with her day after the TV appearance, meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison in Washington.

Before Harris was connected for “The View” interview, Behar and Haines vamped to fill the time and took questions from the audience.

“Sara and I are doing a little tap dancing,” Behar said.

At one point, an audience member asked what moments stood out in her many years on “The View.”

“This one is definitely,” Behar replied. “One thing about working in television, is there’s never a dull moment. … But this is a new one.”

None of the hosts were masked but members of the studio audience were wearing face coverings.

Biden was elected on the central promise of managing the nation’s response to the pandemic and received high early marks for quickly moving to distribute the vaccines. But over the summer, the highly contagious delta variant sent cases skyrocketing again, causing a number of jurisdictions to reinstitute mask mandates.

The president has grown increasingly frustrated at the Americans who have refused the vaccine and endangered the nation’s recovery. More Americans, according to polling, have also begun to sour on his handling of the pandemic.

“The refusal to get vaccinated have cost all of us,” Biden said earlier Friday. “It is not hyperbole: it is literally a tragedy. Don’t let it be your tragedy.”

Biden applauded the recommendation by CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky — who overruled an advisory panel — to include approval of boosters for health-care workers or have another job that puts them at increased risk of being exposed to the virus. The panel had limited approval to those over 65 years old and those with underlying health conditions.

The positive cases also stepped on what was to be a moment in the spotlight for Harris, who had participated in only a handful of televised interviews since taking office. She has come under some scrutiny after some uneven performances in other interviews, and as the administration has taken sharp criticism of images of Border Patrol agents using aggressive tactics against Haitian migrants at the Texas border.

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GOP review finds no proof Arizona election stolen from Trump

PHOENIX (AP) — A Republican-backed review of the 2020 presidential election in Arizona’s largest county ended Friday without producing proof to support former President Donald Trump’s false claims of a stolen election.

After six months of searching for evidence of fraud, the firm hired by Republican lawmakers issued a report that experts described as riddled with errors, bias and flawed methodology. Still, even that partisan review came up with a vote tally that would not have altered the outcome, finding that Biden won by 360 more votes than the official results certified last year.

The finding was an embarrassing end to a widely criticized, and at times bizarre, quest to prove allegations that election officials and courts have rejected. It has no bearing on the final, certified results. Previous reviews of the 2.1 million ballots by nonpartisan professionals that followed state law have found no significant problem with the vote count in Maricopa County, home to Phoenix. Biden won the county by 45,000 votes, key to his 10,500-vote win of Arizona.

For many critics the conclusions, presented at a hearing Friday by the firm Cyber Ninjas, underscored the dangerous futility of the exercise, which has helped fuel skepticism about the validity of the 2020 election and spawned copycat audits nationwide.

“We haven’t learned anything new,” said Matt Masterson, a top U.S. election security official in the Trump administration. “What we have learned from all this is that the Ninjas were paid millions of dollars, politicians raised millions of dollars and Americans’ trust in democracy is lower.”

Cyber Ninjas acknowledged in its report that there were “no substantial differences” between the group’s hand count of ballots and the official count. But the report also made a series of other disputed claims the auditors say should cast doubt on the accuracy and warrant more investigation.

Trump issued statements Friday falsely claiming the review found widespread fraud. He urged Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican vying for his party’s U.S. Senate nomination, to open an investigation.

Brnovich, who has been criticized by Trump supporters for not adequately backing the review, did not commit: “I will take all necessary actions that are supported by the evidence and where I have legal authority,” he said in a statement before the report was made public.

Republicans in the state Senate ordered the review under pressure from Trump and his allies, subpoenaing the election records from Maricopa County and selected the inexperienced, pro-Trump auditors. It took months longer than expected and was widely pilloried by experts.

Still, the Arizona review has become a model that Trump supporters are pushing to replicate in other swing states where Biden won. Pennsylvania’s Democratic attorney general sued Thursday to block a GOP-issued subpoena for a wide array of election materials. In Wisconsin, a retired conservative state Supreme Court justice is leading a Republican-ordered investigation into the 2020 election, and this week threatened to subpoena election officials who don’t comply. Backers also called for additional election reviews in Arizona on Friday.

None of the reviews can change Biden’s victory, which was certified by officials in each of the swing states he won and by Congress on Jan. 6 — after Trump’s supporters, fueled by the same false charges that generated the audits, stormed the U.S. Capitol to try to prevent certification of his loss.

The Arizona report claims a number of shortcomings in election procedures and suggested the final tally still could not be relied upon. Several were challenged by election experts, while members of the Republican-led county Board of Supervisors, which oversees elections, disputed claims on Twitter.

“Unfortunately, the report is also littered with errors & faulty conclusions about how Maricopa County conducted the 2020 General Election,” county officials tweeted.

Election officials say that’s because the review team is biased, ignored the detailed vote-counting procedures in Arizona law and had no experience in the complex field of election audits.

Two of the report’s recommendations stood out because they showed its authors misunderstood election procedures — that there should be paper ballot backups and that voting machines should not be connected to the internet. All Maricopa ballots are already paper, with machines only used to tabulate the votes, and those tabulators are not connected to the internet.

The review also checked the names of voters against a commercial database, finding 23,344 reported moving before ballots went out in October. While the review suggests something improper, election officials note that voters like college students, those who own vacation homes or military members can move to temporary locations while still legally voting at the address where they are registered.

“A competent reviewer of an election would not make a claim like that,” said Trey Grayson, a former Republican secretary of state in Kentucky.

The election review was run by Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan, whose firm has never conducted an election audit before. Logan previously worked with attorneys and Trump supporters trying to overturn the 2020 election and appeared in a film questioning the results of the contest while the ballot review was ongoing.

Logan and others involved with the review presented their findings to two Arizona senators Friday. It kicked off with Shiva Ayyadurai, a COVID-19 vaccine skeptic who claims to have invented email, presenting an analysis relying on “pattern recognition” that flagged purported anomalies in the way mail ballots were processed at the end of the election.

Maricopa County tweeted that the pattern was simply the election office following state law.

“‘Anomaly’ seems to be another way of saying the Senate’s contractors don’t understand election processes,” the county posted during the testimony.

Logan followed up by acknowledging “the ballots that were provided for us to count … very accurately correlated with the official canvass.” He then continued to flag statistical discrepancies — including the voters who moved — that he said merited further investigation.

The review has a history of exploring outlandish conspiracy theories, dedicating time to checking for bamboo fibers on ballots to see if they were secretly shipped in from Asia. It’s also served as a content-generation machine for Trump’s effort to sow skepticism about his loss, pumping out misleading and out-of-context information that the former president circulates long after it’s been debunked.

In July, for example, Logan laid out a series of claims stemming from his misunderstanding of the election data he was analyzing, including that 74,000 mail ballots were recorded as received but not sent. Trump repeatedly amplified the claims. Logan had compared two databases that track different things.

Arizona’s Senate agreed to spend $150,000 on the review, plus security and facility costs. That pales in comparison to the nearly $5.7 million contributed as of late July by Trump allies.

Maricopa County’s official vote count was conducted in front of bipartisan observers, as were legally required audits meant to ensure voting machines work properly. A partial hand-count spot check found a perfect match.

Two extra post-election reviews by federally certified election experts also found no evidence that voting machines switched votes or were connected to the internet. The county Board of Supervisors commissioned the extraordinary reviews in an effort to prove to Trump backers that there were no problems.

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Cassidy reported from Atlanta. Associated Press writers Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix and Nicholas Riccardi in Denver contributed.

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