Associated Press Confirms Widespread Atrocities of Terrorist TPLF in Amhara Region
The Associated Press (AP) reported that more than a dozen witnesses offered the most widespread descriptions yet of TPLF striking communities and a religious site with artillery, killing civilians, looting health centers and schools and sending hundreds of thousands of people fleeing in the past two months.
Although the Government of Ethiopia declared unilateral ceasefire with a view to facilitating the smooth flow of humanitarian aid in Tigray region, the terrorist TPLF has continued with its provocative acts by expanding the conflict into the neighboring Amhara and Afar regions.
Reports revealed that the group has been committing several atrocities, including killings, rape, and looting, on civilians in the Amhara and Afar regions it invaded. Hundreds of thousands have also been displaced from their homes.
The AP, one of the international media outlets that have been silent about the grave atrocities committed by the terrorist TPLF, has at last divulged the truth.
The Associated Press report exposed the atrocities of the group which included striking communities and a religious site with artillery, killing civilians, looting health centers and schools and sending hundreds of thousands of people fleeing in the past two months.
In the town of Nefas Mewucha in the Amhara region, a hospital’s medical equipment was smashed. The fighters looted medicines and other supplies, leaving more than a dozen patients to die, AP revealed.
“It is a lie that they are not targeting civilians and infrastructures,” hospital manager Birhanu Mulu told Associated Press. He said his team had to transfer some 400 patients elsewhere for care. “Everyone can come and witness the destruction that they caused.”
The United States, which for months has been outspoken about the abuses against the group, this week turned sharp criticism on the TPLF, AP noted.
“In Amhara now, we now know that the (the TPLF have) … looted the warehouses, they’ve looted trucks and they have caused a great deal of destruction in all the villages they have visited,” the head of the U.S. Agency for Economic Development, Sean Jones, told the Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation.
Many Ethiopians have been expressing their support for the government, the news agency wrote.
“Our children are living in terror. We are here to stop this,” Mekdess Muluneh Asayehegn, a new Amhara militia recruit, said propping a gun on a full plastic sack she lay on the ground and practiced sighting.
In the town of Debre Tabor, Getasew Anteneh said he watched as the TPLF shelled and destroyed a home, killing six people.
Getasew helped carry away the dead. “I believe it was a deliberate revenge attack, and civilians are suffering.”
“I’ve witnessed with my own eyes when the (TPLF) killed one person during our journey,” Mesfin Tadesse, who fled his home in Kobo town in July, said. “His sister was pleading with them when they killed him for no reason.”
Zewditu Tikuye, who also fled Kobo, said her 57-year-old husband was killed by TPLF fighters when he tried to stay behind to protect their home and cows. “He wasn’t armed,” she said. Now she shelters with her six children in a small house with 10 other people.
Others seek shelter in schools, sleeping in classrooms as newcomers drenched from the rainy season arrive. They squat in muddy clearings, waiting for plastic plates of the spongy injera to be handed out for the latest meal.
People in Amhara now watch in horror as the war damages religious sites in one of the world’s most ancient Christian civilizations, the news agency reported.
On Monday, the fourth-century Checheho monastery was hit by artillery fire and partially collapsed.
“This is very brutal,” said Mergeta Abraraw Meles, who works there as a cashier. He believes it was intentionally targeted by the TPLF.
Source: Ethiopia News Agency