Crammed in a ditch by the roadside, dozens of corpses are rotting in the Mai-Kadra sun, without burial, two weeks after the massacre which took place in this locality of Tigray, a conflicted region in northern Ethiopia.
No one denies that something terrible happened here on November 9: hundreds of civilians were killed, with sticks, knives, machetes and axes, even strangled with ropes.
But the atrocities are the subject of cross-accusations involving each side of the conflict in Tigray, where pro-government forces clash with troops from the regional authorities of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).
An AFP team was authorized by the federal government to visit Mai-Kadra a few days ago, which had 40,000 inhabitants before the conflict. Residents of the Amhara ethnic group, originally from the neighboring region of the same name, accuse their Tigrayan neighbors – most of whom have left the city – of taking part in the atrocities, as the Ethiopian army draws closer.
“Militiamen and police (from the Tigray region, Editor’s note) attacked us with firearms, civilians with machetes”, says on his hospital bed Misganaw Gebeyo, a 23-year-old farm worker, an ugly scar protruding from the bandage encircling his head: “the whole population participated”.
Before being hit with a machete and left for dead, he saw, in terror in his home, a friend of his being beheaded with a machete. “They wanted to exterminate the Amhara,” he assures us.
The President of Tigray, Debretsion Gebremichael, firmly denied the involvement of troops loyal to the TPLF in the massacre: “It cannot have any links with us (…) We have our values, we have our rules”.
Law of retaliation
In neighboring Sudan, on the other hand, Tigrayans from Mai-Kadra met by AFP in camps where approximately 40,000 Ethiopians are now crowded, accuse the federal army and the Amhara militiamen who support it of having attacked civilians. The army took control of the city on November 10.
“The Ethiopian soldiers (of the federal army) and the Amhara militiamen entered the city, fired in the air and on residents,” testifies to AFP Marsem Gadi, a 29-year-old farmer, a refugee in the Oum Raquba camp.
“I saw men in civilian clothes attacking villagers with knives and axes,” he explains, “corpses littered the streets”.
Before fleeing to Sudan, Marsem returned to his home. His house had been looted and his wife and their three-year-old child were missing: “I don’t know if they’re still alive.”
She also without news of her husband and her two children, Elifa Sagadi, refugee in the same camp, points the finger at the “soldiers of Abiy Ahmed”, the Prime Minister, and the militias Amhara “Fano”. “On the road, I saw at least 40 corpses”.
Faced with testimonies of this kind, Addis Ababa said it had gathered “credible information according to which TPLF agents infiltrated camps for refugees who fled to Sudan to carry out disinformation missions”.
However, according to Fisseha Tekle, researcher at Amnesty International, an organization which revealed the existence of this massacre, the two accounts “are not necessarily contradictory”: a kind of law of ethnic retaliation, revealing the dangers of a conflict likely to degenerate into community confrontation.
“We do not know the real extent” of what happened in Mai-Kadra, he told AFP.
In revealing this massacre, the deadliest known since the start of the conflict in Tigray on November 4, the human rights organization did not specifically identify the perpetrators.
But she cited witnesses accusing Tigray troops loyal to the TPLF of having attacked residents of the Amhara ethnic group during their retreat.
On Tuesday, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC), an independent public institution, accused a militia of young Tigrayans supported by local security forces, of having massacred at least 600 people in Mai-Kadra “pre-identified from their ethnicity ”.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who launched the federal army to attack Tigray to dislodge the TPLF, which had defied him for months, saw it as an additional reason to justify his operation.
The impartial investigation demanded by the UN and human rights defenders seems unlikely in the short term given the blackout and travel restrictions to which Tigray is subject, where the fighting continues.
“Ethnic cleansing”
Surrounded by sesame and sorghum fields, Mai-Kadra has been spared from the impacts of shells and bullets that disfigure other localities in western Tigray. His wounds are less visible but surely deeper.
About fifty freshly dug graves pierce the ground of the park of the town church. Beside the shovels, empty deodorants, whose remains of lemon scents struggle to mask the stench of death.
“I saw the real hell, here in Mai-Kadra”, assures the administrator of the city, Fentahun Bihohegn, just appointed by the federal government.
“Brutal ethnic cleansing has been committed against the Amhara people,” Fentahun said, accusing the “criminals” of the TPLF.
Since government forces took the city, it is clear that the Amhara have been managing it. Protected by three armed guards, Mr. Fentahun ensures that there are still Tigrayan inhabitants, but is unable to identify any.
For decades, Amhara and Tigrayans have not always lived in good neighborliness, their relations being poisoned by land disputes that sometimes degenerate into violence.
The fact that Mai-Kadra is now led by Amhara relieves the members of this community but ultimately raises fears of new tensions.
“Now I feel very free,” says Adugna Abiru, an Amhara farmer who has lived in Mai-Kadra for 20 years. “Before, when you spoke on the phone in Amharic and not in Tigrinya (the Tigrayan language), looked askance. You didn’t feel safe. “
Mr. Fentahun, the new administrator, assures that the Amhara are not seeking revenge on the Tigrayans. Like the Addis Ababa government, on the contrary, it calls on refugees to return from Sudan, now that the fighting is over in this part of Tigray.
“Our vision is to create a safe place for every Ethiopian,” he said, “we want to make this place a safe haven where everyone can live together.”