Fears of water pollution.. Setet River carries to Sudan the bodies of the Tigrayans and the atrocities of the war in Ethiopia

Eastern Sudan -

“They stopped throwing the bodies into the Setit River because they floated up to Sudan and exposed them to the world, but the killing in the west of the Ethiopian Tigray region did not stop,” explained the head of the Ethiopian community in the Sudanese state of Kassala. They stopped seeing the bodies in the river.

Until last week, villagers on the banks of the Setit River in Sudan's Kassala and Gedaref states - the far east of the country - had retrieved dozens of bodies of people from the Ethiopian Tigray ethnicity.

The Setit is a seasonal river that runs between Sudan and Ethiopia, where it is known as Tekze.

Over the course of days, the residents of 4 villages on the river were shocked to find floating bodies pushed by the river's waves to the rocky banks.

The head of the Ethiopian community in Kassala State, Kibro Tensai, who oversaw the exhumation and burial of the bodies with representatives of the police, the army and the people, recounts the situation in which they found the victims, against whom grave violations were committed, as he put it.

Villagers in the Sudanese states of Kassala and Gedaref recovered dozens of bodies of Ethiopian Tigrayans (Al Jazeera Net)

tied corpses

According to Qabru Tensai, in an interview with Al-Jazeera Net, the bodies were mutilated to the point of amputation and mutilation.

Pictures obtained by Al Jazeera Net and taken in order to document the violations committed against the victims showed bodies stripped of their clothes, hands and feet tied, some of them amputated from the middle of the body, and others whose head was separated from the rest of the body.

Tensai - a Tigrayan national - said that the Ethiopian army and the Amhara militia committed atrocities against hundreds of Tigrayan detainees in the town of Hamra, west of the region, including shackles and throwing the victims into the Setit River or shooting them and throwing them into the river.

He counted 47 bodies that had been recovered, including 5 bodies of women, in the villages of Wad Koto, Tabusib, al-Jira and Idriss, about 50 km south of Hamdayit (the meeting point of the Ethiopian and Eritrean borders with the borders of Sudan).

And a Twitter account run by the Ethiopian government said that "the accounts circulating about the bodies on social media were due to a false propaganda campaign in Tigray."

Eyewitnesses spoke of mutilation of corpses and bullet holes (Al Jazeera Net)

assassination campaign

According to eyewitnesses to Al-Jazeera Net, the people in the villages of Al-Hira and Tabousib, in Kassala State, pulled two bodies from the Setit River last Friday, then 3 bodies on Saturday.

Witnesses said that the last corpses were among dozens of corpses recovered by the people, bearing signs of torture and bullet holes, and some were found bound. The bodies were buried under the supervision of the head of the Ethiopian community and representatives of the police and military intelligence.

The director of the refugee reception center in Hamdayet Yaqoub Muhammad Yaqoub told Al Jazeera Net that the Ethiopian army and the Amhara militia loyal to it have been targeting the Tigrayans crossing the Setit River since last July 25.

He says that snipers of the Ethiopian forces targeted about 150 Tigrayan refugees who were about to cross the Setit River to Sudan, killing 10 of them on the spot, swept away by the strong current of the river in the rainy season.

He points out that 35 of these refugees survived the snipers' bullets and managed to cross to Hamdayet. They were told that the Amhara's El Fano and Olgayet militias executed 55 Tigrayans by firing squad or by handcuffing them with ropes and throwing them into the river.

According to Yaqoub, the Ethiopian army on the eastern bank of the river - opposite Hamdayet - has reinforced its forces and armament - it seems - for fear of the incursions of refugees to join the Tigray Liberation Front after its recent victories.

Survivors tell the story

New Tigrayan refugees Bhamdayet told Al Jazeera Net horrific stories of Ethiopian forces shooting their comrades while crossing the Setit River.

According to refugee Moz Tulumriam, "26 years old", who was one of the survivors who crossed the river despite sniper fire, he and 9 other escapees managed to hide behind a hill on the river bank and saw an army force arresting about 30 Tigrayans.

"They were sitting on the ground and they chose 3 of them, they shot them and threw them into the river," he added.

The director of the refugee reception center in Hamdayit confirms that some of those fleeing from the western regions of the Tigray region, specifically from the towns of Hamra and Adbay (at the border of Sudan), drowned while crossing the Setit River due to the strength of the current these days.

Ethiopia has a dam on the Setit River, which is called “Tekze” among the Ethiopians, and Sudan has built a dam on this river and the Atbara River, known as the “Ali Atbara and Setit Dam Complex.”

Director of the Refugee Reception Center in Hamdaït, Sudan: Some of those fleeing from the Tigray region drowned while crossing the Setit River (Al Jazeera Net)

Documenting violations

The head of the Ethiopian community in Kassala state says that "the throwing of corpses into the Setit River has stopped because the Ethiopian authorities are afraid to expose them in the world after the current carried these corpses to Sudan."

Al-Rajeh asserts that other numbers of bodies were not recovered because the accounts speak of a greater number of dead, as the recovered bodies were carried by the current to the banks of the river.

He points out that thousands of Tigrayans are being detained by the Ethiopian army and the Amhara militias in the corn warehouses in Hamra, near the border of Sudan, and the liquidation of the Tigrayans continues on the roads leading to Sudan.

It is reported that they documented the violations of the bodies arriving in Sudan via the Setit River by opening reports with the Sudanese police, and photographing the bodies in the condition in which they arrived, including ropes, amputation of limbs and genital mutilation.

He says that international organizations, including the United Nations Children's Fund "UNICEF", have also documented these crimes as evidence confirming the violations suffered by Tigray.

River pollution potential

The Sudanese authorities have refrained from commenting on the bodies of the Ethiopians recovered from the Setit River inside their territory, while officials and citizens in the Wad Al-Helio locality of Kassala State fear the possibility of contamination of the river water due to the rotting and decomposing bodies.

An official source in Wad Al-Helio locality told Al-Jazeera Net that the river water is likely to be contaminated, which requires the intervention of the federal authorities by sending a team to examine the water.

According to Abdel Hadi Abdel Qader, a leader in the Forces of Freedom and Change - the ruling coalition - Bod Al Helio, the waters of the Setit River are sure to be polluted by the bodies that were thrown into the river and those bodies in the open in the valleys inside the Tigray region, which were washed away by rainwater into Sudan.

Abdel-Qader appeals to the transitional government in Khartoum to send a team to examine the waters of the Setit River, where the Magharib water station is located, which feeds villages "9, 10 and 11".

He notes that the incidence of diarrhea increased in conjunction with the appearance of corpses in the river, as everyone who used to return to the river to fetch drinking water reported the presence of one or more corpses.

He explained to Al-Jazeera Net that after the opening of the upper dam of the Atbara and Setit rivers, the situation became better with the flow of the river because it was like a stagnant lake before the dam doors were opened.