Ethiopia Erasing Ethnicity

FILE - Shoes left behind belonging to Tigrayan refugees are scattered near the banks of the Tekeze River on the Sudan-Ethiopia border after Ethiopian forces blocked people from crossing into Sudan, in Hamdayet, eastern Sudan, Dec. 15, 2020. Thousands have died in Ethiopia's brutal year-long war that began in Tigray. The death toll is one of the biggest unknowns of the war. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty, File)

A groom, a lawyer, an ambulance driver among Ethiopia’s dead

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — A groom at his wedding, a construction worker and father of four, an ambulance driver: All three are among the thousands who have died in Ethiopia’s brutal year-long war that began in Tigray.

Desta Haileselassie sits at his desk in Stockholm, Sweden, on Monday, Oct. 18, 2021. Cut off from Tigray due to a communications blackout, Desta has been compiling a list of Tigrayan victims of war. He is one of many in the Tigrayan diaspora who have waited for months to know whether loved ones are alive. (AP Photo/Nat Castaneda)

‘You can’t even cry loudly': Counting Ethiopia’s war dead

FILE - Haftom Gebretsadik, a 17-year-old from Freweini, Ethiopia, near Hawzen, who had his right hand amputated and lost fingers on his left after an artillery round struck his home in March, sits on his bed at the Ayder Referral Hospital in Mekele, in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia, on May 6, 2021. A year after war began there, the findings of the only human rights investigation allowed in Ethiopia's blockaded Tigray region will be released Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis, File)

Ethiopia tried to limit rare UN report on Tigray war abuses

In this photo provided anonymously, Genet Mehari, 5, is treated for malnutrition but with limited medicine, at the Ayder Referral Hospital in Mekele, in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia, Tuesday, Sept. 28, 2021. In the regional capital Mekele, a year of war and months of government-enforced deprivation have left the city of a half-million people with a rapidly shrinking stock of food, fuel, medicine and cash. (AP Photo)

‘God have mercy': Tigray residents describe life under siege

In this photo provided anonymously, a severely malnourished child is treated in an intensive care unit at the Ayder Referral Hospital, where medicines have almost run out and hospital staffers haven't been paid since June, in Mekele, in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia in Sept. 2021. For months, the United Nations has warned of famine in Tigray and now internal documents and witness accounts reveal the first starvation deaths since Ethiopia's government in June imposed what the U.N. calls "a de facto humanitarian aid blockade." (UGC via AP)

‘I just cry': Dying of hunger in Ethiopia’s blockaded Tigray

Priest Yared Adamu holds an Ethiopian Orthodox cross in the churchyard where residents say more than 50 civilians have been laid to rest in makeshift graves, in the village of Chenna Teklehaymanot in the Amhara region of northern Ethiopia Thursday, Sept. 9, 2021. At the scene of one of the deadliest battles of Ethiopia's 10-month Tigray conflict, witness accounts reflected the blurring line between combatant and civilian after the federal government urged all capable citizens to stop Tigray forces "once and for all." (AP Photo)

At scene of Ethiopia’s new killings, some fight, some flee

At the scene of one of the deadliest battles of Ethiopia’s 10-month Tigray conflict, witness accounts reflect the increasingly blurred line between combatant and civilian after the federal government urged all capable citizens to stop the Tigray forces “once and for all.”

In this photo taken from a video shot on Wednesday, Aug. 4, 2021 in Wad el-Hilu, Sudan, a man washes in the Setit river, known in Ethiopia as Tekeze River. Locals and refugees have pulled dozens from bodies from the river separating Ethiopia’s troubled Tigray region from Sudan in the past week, many with bullet wounds and their hands bound. Witnesses say that they are ethnic killings committed by Ethiopian government forces of Tigrayans, and that the bodies are being dumped to conceal the evidence. There was no immediate comment from the Ethiopian government but it has denied ethnic killings in the past. (AP Photo/Mohaned Awad)

At river where Tigrayan bodies floated, fears of ‘many more’

From time to time, a body floating down the river separating Ethiopia’s troubled Tigray region from Sudan was a silent reminder of a war conducted in the shadows.

In this Tuesday, May 11, 2021 photo, Roman Kidanemariam, 35, holds her malnourished daughter, Merkab Ataklti, 22 months old, in the treatment tent of a medical clinic in the town of Abi Adi, in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia. As the United States warns that up to 900,000 people in Tigray face famine conditions in the world’s worst hunger crisis in a decade, little is known about vast areas of Tigray that have been under the control of combatants from all sides since November 2020. With blocked roads and ongoing fighting, humanitarian groups have been left without access. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

Trapped in Ethiopia’s Tigray, people ‘falling like leaves’

The plea arrived from a remote area that had produced only rumors and residents fleeing for their lives.

An Ethiopian woman argues with others over the allocation of yellow split peas after it was distributed by the Relief Society of Tigray in the town of Agula, in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia, on Saturday, May 8, 2021. In war-torn Tigray, more than 350,000 people already face famine, according to the U.N. and other humanitarian groups. It is not just that people are starving; it is that many are being starved, The Associated Press found. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

In Tigray, food is often a weapon of war as famine looms

ABI ADI, Ethiopia (AP) — First the Eritrean soldiers stole the pregnant woman’s food as she hid in the bush.

A fighter loyal to the Tigray People's Liberation Front mans a guard post on the outskirts of the town of Hawzen, then-controlled by the group, in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia, on Friday, May 7, 2021. The battle for Hawzen is part of a larger war in Tigray between the Ethiopian government and the Tigrayan rebels that has led to massacres, gang rapes and the flight of more than 2 million of the region’s 6 million people. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

Lost limbs, rising anger as town is caught up in Tigray war

HAWZEN, Ethiopia (AP) — Shops remained shuttered, some government workers hadn’t been paid and the town’s main hospital was utterly laid to waste.

A 40-year-old woman who was says she was held captive and repeatedly raped by 15 Eritrean soldiers over a period of a week in a remote village near the Eritrea border, speaks during an interview at a hospital in Mekele, in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia, on Friday, May 14, 2021. "They talked to each other. Some of them: 'We kill her.' Some of them: 'No, no. Rape is enough for her,'" she recalls. She said one of the soldiers told her: "This season is our season, not your season. This is the time for us." (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

‘Our season': Eritrean troops kill, rape, loot in Tigray

MEKELE, Ethiopia (AP) — Women who make it to the clinic for sex abuse survivors in the northern Ethiopian region of Tigray usually struggle to describe their injuries.

A Tigrayan employee of the state-owned Ethiopian Airlines, who said he fled the country after being released on bail, poses for a portrait at an undisclosed location in April 2021. “We need you very badly today,” he recalled federal police saying as they took him from his home without explanation. He said he saw almost 100 high-ranking military officials during his two months in detention ending in January 2021. (AP Photo)

‘Clean out our insides': Ethiopia detains Tigrayans amid war

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Ethiopia has swept up thousands of ethnic Tigrayans into detention centers across the country on accusations that they are traitors, often holding them for months and without charges, the AP has found.

Tigrayan refugee Abraha Kinfe Gebremariam, 40, second left, sits for a photograph with his sons, Micheale, 5, left; Daniel, 11, center; his 19-year-old brother-in-law, Goytom Tsegay, second right, and his 4-month-old twin daughters Aden, right, and Turfu Gebremariam, on his lap, inside their family's shelter in Hamdayet, eastern Sudan, near the border with Ethiopia, on March 23, 2021. A fellow refugee, Mulu Gebrencheal, a mother of five, has become an informal adviser, offering guidance on the babies’ care. Abraha and his sons are quick learners, she said. But she mourns for the twins and the death of their mother. “Even the hug of a mother is very sweet,” she said. “They’ve never had this. They never will.” (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)

‘Look after my babies': In Ethiopia, a Tigray family’s quest

Gunfire crackled near the straw-woven home of Abraha Kinfe Gebremariam. He hoped it drowned out the cries of his wife, curled up in pain, and the newborn twin daughters wailing beside her.

People displaced by the recent conflict live in crowded conditions at a makeshift camp for the displaced in a derelict building of the Shire campus of Axum University, in Shire, in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2021. For months, one great unknown in Ethiopia's Tigray conflict has been the fate of hundreds of thousands of people in vast rural areas beyond the reach of outside aid, but now thousands who have been hiding there have begun arriving in a community that can barely support them. (International Rescue Committee via AP)

‘People are starving': New exodus in Ethiopia’s Tigray area

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) — Skinny, hungry, fleeing threats of violence, thousands of people who have been hiding in rural areas of Ethiopia’s Tigray region have begun arriving in a community that can barely support them — and more are said to be on the way.

Ethiopia now calls Axum massacre allegations ‘credible’

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Ethiopia on Wednesday said it is investigating “credible allegations of atrocities and human rights abuses” in its embattled Tigray region, including in the city of Axum, where The Associated Press and Amnesty International have separately documented a massacre of several hundr

An elderly woman who fled to the city of Axum in the Tigray region of Ethiopia to seek safety sits with her head bandaged after being wounded during an attack on the city, Monday, Nov. 30, 2020. She later died of her wounds. As Ethiopia’s Tigray region slowly resumes telephone service after three months of conflict, witnesses gave The Associated Press a detailed account of what might be its deadliest massacre, at the sacred Ethiopian Orthodox church in Axum. (AP Photo)

‘Horrible': Witnesses recall massacre in Ethiopian holy city

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Bodies with gunshot wounds lay in the streets for days in Ethiopia’s holiest city.

Zenebu, who arrived home in Colorado after weeks trapped in Tigray, Ethiopia, where she had gone to visit her mother, poses for a photo Friday, Jan. 22, 2021. Huge unknowns persist in Ethiopia's deadly conflict, but details of the involvement of neighboring Eritrea, one of the world’s most secretive countries, are emerging with witness accounts by survivors and others such as Zenebu. While fighting in support of Ethiopian forces, Eritrean soldiers have been accused of killing civilians, targeting refugees and even acting as local authorities. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Witnesses: Eritrean soldiers loot, kill in Ethiopia’s Tigray

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The Eritrean soldiers’ pockets clinked with stolen jewelry. Warily, Zenebu watched them try on dresses and other clothing looted from homes in a town in Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region.

Abrahaley Minasbo a 22-year-old trained dancer and Tigrayan survivor from Mai-Kadra, Ethiopia, shows wounds on his face and his partially amputated hand, inside a shelter, in Hamdeyat Transition Center near the Sudan-Ethiopia border, eastern Sudan, Tuesday, Dec. 15, 2020. Minasbo said Amhara militia members dragged him from his home in Mai-Kadra on Nov. 9 and beat him in the street with a hammer, an axe, sticks and a machete, then left him for dead. Scars now slope across the right side of his face and neck. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)

‘I would never go back': Horrors grow in Ethiopia’s conflict

HAMDAYET, Sudan (AP) — One survivor arrived on broken legs, others on the run.

In this fragile refugee community on the edge of Ethiopia’s Tigray conflict, those who have fled nearly two months of deadly fighting continue to bring new accounts of horror.

Ethnic Amhara refugees who fled Mai-Kadra, Ethiopia, sit inside their temporary shelter in an area separated from ethnic Tigrayan refugees, at Village 8, the transit center near the Lugdi border crossing, eastern Sudan, Sunday, Dec. 6, 2020. Witnesses in Mai-Kadra told the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission and Amnesty International that Tigrayan forces and allies attacked Amhara. But others say it was the other way around: Tigrayans were targeted by Ethiopian federal forces and allied Amhara regional troops. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)

Shadowy Ethiopian massacre could be ‘tip of the iceberg’

UMM RAKOUBA, Sudan (AP) — The only thing the survivors can agree on is that hundreds of people were slaughtered in a single Ethiopian town.

Sudanese forces stand alert on the banks of the Tekeze River on the Sudan-Ethiopia border after Ethiopian forces blocked people from crossing into Sudan, in Hamdayet, eastern Sudan, Thursday, Dec. 3, 2020. The Sudanese forces, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the events, said people tried to cross from Ethiopia around 6 a.m. to Hamdayet in Sudan but were stopped, and refugees waiting on the Sudan side became upset and began throwing rocks. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)

Ethiopian forces said to block refugees from entering Sudan

HAMDAYET, Sudan (AP) — Ethiopian forces on Thursday blocked people fleeing the country’s embattled Tigray region from crossing into Sudan at the busiest border crossing point for refugees, Sudanese forces said.