About 50 bodies have been found floating in the river between Ethiopia’s Tigray and Sudan, according to a Sudanese official in Kassala province.
The Setit River separates Sudan from Ethiopia and serves as a de facto boundary between the conflicting Tigrayan forces and Ethiopian-backed Amhara forces.
“They were shot in the chest, abdomen, legs … and also had their hands tied,” said Tewodros Tefera, a surgeon who fled the nearby town of Tigray in Humera to Sudan. The doctor told the Associated Press (AP) that more than 10 bodies had been buried in the past six days and 28 more had been found to be buried.
“We actually take care of the bodies discovered by fishermen, but I suspect there are more bodies on the river,” says Tewodros.
“We found nine … They tied them up with a rope and they were swollen, but there is no evidence that they were hit or shot,” said an Ethiopian refugee from Humera.
“I saw many barbaric things … Some had been hit by an ax,” said another Hamdayet doctor who saw the bodies and spoke anonymously. Some of the bodies had facial marks indicating that they were ethnic Tigrayans, the doctor added.
Tigrayans have previously accused Amhara forces allied with the central government of dumping organs there, allegations they deny. An Ethiopian government-run Twitter account said on Monday that the accounts of floating bodies circulating on social media were due to a fake campaign by Tigrayan “propagandists”.
The Tigray War
The armed conflict only erupted in November 2020 between Ethiopia’s federal forces and the region’s ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). Six million people in the region live in harsh conditions created by the conflict and about 900,000 people are facing starvation.
In recent weeks, fighting has spread from Tigray to Amhara and Afar, two regions adjacent to Tigray, which has worsened conditions in the war-torn country and Africa’s second most populous nation.
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