Once again, bodies have been found in a river in the border area between Ethiopia, the hotly contested region of Tigray and Sudan.

Two more dead were discovered, reported the British BBC on Wednesday.

The Setit River, which is called Tekeze in Ethiopia, runs in parts on the border between Tigray and the Amhara region, which is also Ethiopian.

Claudia Bröll

Freelance Africa correspondent based in Cape Town.

  • Follow I follow

Fishermen and Ethiopian refugees had reported at least thirty bodies earlier this week. Some had gunshot wounds and their hands were tied, it said. The reports were confirmed by Sudanese eyewitnesses, according to Reuters news agency. Some of the dead are said to be people from Humera in Tigray. Representatives of the Ethiopian government, in turn, had described the reports as a campaign by the "propagandists" from Tigray.

In November 2020, a simmering conflict between the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's central government turned into an armed conflict that recently spread to the neighboring regions of Amhara and Afar. Reports of atrocities against the civilian population on both sides have been increasing for a long time.

This week, the American government was “very concerned” about the worsening conflict and the consequences for humanitarian aid. "We renew our call to the parties to end hostilities and start talks on a ceasefire," said a government spokesman. The TPLF should withdraw immediately from Amhara and Afar, at the same time the Amhara government should withdraw its fighters from western Tigray, and the government of Eritrea its fighters from Ethiopia.

Meanwhile, aid organizations can barely penetrate into Tigray. On Wednesday, the Ethiopian government banned three humanitarian organizations from continuing to operate there, including Doctors Without Borders. They had spread misinformation on social media that did not correspond to their mandate, it was said to justify. The head of the UN Emergency Aid Office, Martin Griffiths, had previously sharply rejected claims by the Ethiopian government that aid workers were helping the rebels in Tigray and even providing them with weapons. Such allegations are dangerous. In total, several thousand people have died in the conflict, and 400,000 are starving.