Fighters affiliated with the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) have been accused of committing atrocities including gang rape and assault in Ethiopia’s Amhara region, according to a new Amnesty International report.
The Amnesty report, released Wednesday, said TPLF fighters “deliberately killed dozens of people, gang-raped dozens of women and girls — some as young as 14 — and looted private and public property in two areas of northern Ethiopia’s Amhara region” in late August and early September 2021.
Tigrayan forces took control of those two areas in July 2021, according to Amnesty.
In the town of Kobo, “Tigrayan fighters deliberately killed unarmed civilians, seemingly in revenge for losses among their ranks at the hands of Amhara militias and armed farmers,” according to Amnesty, who based their investigation on interviews with 27 witnesses and survivors — 10 of whom marked the date of the massacre as September 9, 2021.
Many people were found to have “been killed execution-style, shot in the head, chest or back, some with their hands tied behind their backs,” according to Amnesty’s interviews with Kobo residents.
The investigation also found that dozens of women and girls in the Amhara village of Chenna were raped and brutalized by Tigrayan fighters from July 2021 onwards. The sexual violence was often carried out in the victims’ homes and sometimes in front of their families, according to the report.
“Many of the survivors suffered severe and long-term physical and psychological damage, including 10 who remained hospitalized three months after they were raped,” the report said.
The conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region erupted in November 2020 and spread to neighboring Amhara and Afar regions in July 2021. All sides party to the conflict have been accused of committing atrocities that constitute war crimes.
