Ethiopia's military took responsibility for a fatal attack in a crowded market in the country's Tigray region yesterday. According to health officials, at least 64 people, including children, were killed in the airstrike. The military said that they were only targeting rebels.
Ethiopian soldiers stopped medical personnel from reaching the market in Togoga village. A doctor recounted a "horrible" scene of critically injured individuals on the ground, wailing in pain with no medical attention. The doctor who arrived at the scene said most of the patients they encountered were old men, women, and children. Only a few young men were there.
Ethiopia denies targeting civilians
According to military spokesperson Col. Getnet Adane, fighters backing the Tigray region's previous leaders had gathered to commemorate Martyrs' Day when the attack happened. "The Ethiopian air force uses the latest technology, so it conducted a precision strike that was successful," Adane said, as per Fox News.
A regional health authority said the airstrike injured more than 100 individuals. Half of them were critically injured. Ethiopian soldiers reportedly stopped medical professionals from arriving and fired at a Red Cross ambulance attempting to reach the area.
Two days after the attack, bodies were still being retrieved from the wreckage. Many of the survivors had gunshot and blunt trauma wounds and were still being brought to regional hospitals, said a doctor in Mekele, the regional capital. The evacuation of critically injured people to Mekele has been described as a "matter of life and death" by the International Committee of the Red Cross.
United Nations spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters on Thursday that the UN is still unable to access the area. The airstrike, which was one of the deadliest killings of the war, occurred in Tigray during some of the heaviest combats. The crisis began in November as the Eritrea-backed Ethiopian forces chased Tigray's previous leaders.
Ethiopian soldiers were relocated to other places for Monday's national election, according to an Ethiopian military official, who rejected Tigray fighters' claims of advances in recent days. Following Ethiopia's recent designation of Tigray's previous governing party as a terrorist group, Tigrayans and others have expressed fear that anyone associated with Tigray fighters, including civilians, may be targeted, Mercury News reported.
The US, EU condemn Ethiopia's deadly Tigray airstrike
The US called it "reprehensible conduct," through a statement by the State Department. Thousands of civilians have been killed in Tigray, and 350,000 people are now facing one of the world's worst catastrophes in years, according to the US. Ethiopia says that the majority of Tigray's 6 million residents are receiving help while relief workers report that troops have repeatedly refused access to many sections of the region.
Per AP News, Ethiopia's claim that the airstrike was exclusively targeting outraged Tigrayans. The actual death toll from the strike might be much higher since some individuals likely carried the deceased home to their nearby villages and buried them without informing regional officials, stated Hailu Kebede, a former Togoga resident, and official with the Salsay Woyane Tigray.
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