Ethnic cleansing: Ethiopian forces throwing kids, women into concentration camps, building mass graves, says report

Ethiopian forces occupying a major city in the northern Tigray region are indulging in ethnic cleansing of the native people, including kids and women, by throwing them into makeshift concentration camps and dumping mutilated bodies into mass graves, a report citing witnesses has claimed.

According to the Telegraph, ethnic Amhara forces have been going “door-to-door” to round up anyone who is ethnic Tigrayan in the latest harrowing evidence of population cleansing in Ethiopia’s civil war.

"Feven Berhe was an innocent resident who owned a small shop. They took her to Tekeze river and shot her," the Telegraph quoted a resident who knew the 40-year-old victim.

"Before they killed her, they removed her eyes and cut off her legs. They did not let anyone pick her body up and bury her,” the resident claimed.

The ethnic cleansing follows a war that broke out between Ethiopia’s federal troops and forces loyal to the Tigray People`s Liberation Front (TPLF), which controls the Tigray region. Thousands have died and more than two million people have been forced to flee their homes.

Humera city houses a population of approximately 50,000 near Ethiopia's border with Eritrea and Sudan. Because of its strategic location, it was one of the first places to be attacked when Ethiopia’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and Eritrea's dictator launched a pincer attack to crush Tigray’s regional government in November.

Though Tigray forces in June reclaimed much of the region as Ethiopian and allied forces retreated, western Tigray is still controlled by authorities from Ethiopia's neighbouring Amhara region, who have cleared out many ethnic Tigrayans while saying the land is historically theirs.

Since last year, ethnic Amhara forces, who hail from a neighbouring region and are allied to the Nobel laureate, have controlled the city, along with swathes of western Tigray.

Sources told the Telegraph that after a stunning series of victories by the Tigrayan Defence Forces in late June, the occupying forces in Humera started to purge ethnic Tigrayans in the city.

On July 15, Amhara forces held a public meeting in the main municipality hall in Humera to decide the fate of Tigrayans in the areas they controlled.

“They said this—We should exterminate all Tigrayan residents in the city. We must cleanse them all,” said one man who claims he attended the public meeting.

At the beginning of August, 43 bloated and bloodied bodies were found floating down the Tekeze River, which separates the region from Sudan.

(With inputs from agencies)