AU peace envoy: Over 600,000 people killed in Ethiopia's Tigray war
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Staff reporter GAROWE ONLINE
- Posted On 17-01-2023, 08:08AM
NAIROBI - At least 600,000 people were killed in Ethiopia's Tigray war which lasted for two years, a top mediator has said, which suggests that the number could be probably more should the final statistics get properly collated by credible data processors who would not hide any information.
Olusegun Obasanjo, the African Union peace envoy to the Horn of Africa, noted that the brutal war was underestimated and could have cost further damage beyond imaginable heights had the parties failed to strike a truce. Those dead are both innocent civilians and members of security forces.
“The number of people killed was about 600,000,” former Nigerian president and African Union envoy Olusegun Obasanjo told the Financial Times in an interview.
During the interview, Olusegun Obasanjo, the former Nigerian president, said the truce in Nairobi and Pretoria fundamentally, "stopped an average of 1000 deaths per day". The Ethiopian National Defense Forces [ENDF] was at loggerheads with Tigray People's Liberation Front [TPLF] after an attack at the Northern Command in 2020.
Also central in the negotiations was the former Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta who worked closely with Obasanjo and the United States which largely facilitated the peace process. Both the US and the African Union [AU] have been instrumental in brokering the peace process.
Tim Vanden Bempt, who is part of a research group investigating civilian atrocities in Tigray at the University of Ghent, said Obasanjo’s 600,000 estimates might be roughly correct. Tigray was blockaded for long periods, making independent analysis of what went on, including how many people died, extremely difficult, say experts.
“Based on reports from the field, the number of dead could be somewhere between 300,000 and 400,000 civilian casualties only — this from atrocities, starvation, and lack of healthcare,” Vanden Bempt said. In addition, he said there were unofficial estimates of between 200,000 and 300,000 battlefield deaths, though these could not be accurately verified.
Credible reports also indicate that the war saw many civilians get raped with the perpetrators targeting both children and women. The ENDF was being backed by soldiers from Eritrea and Amhara regional militia, who are yet to completely withdraw and disengage from Tigray.
Should the estimates stand, then the deaths could be slightly higher than the deaths in Ukraine and Russian wars, or, the tally could overtake the number recorded in the Colombian war which left thousands of people dead and others critically injured.
Daniel Bekele, Ethiopia’s human rights chief, said casualty estimates should be treated with extreme caution. “We will probably not be able to know the full number of casualties,” he said. “We need to be cautious about overly exaggerated death toll estimates by all sides.”
The war left critical infrastructural projects destroyed, with telecommunication, hospitals, banking, and electricity suffering the most. The country has activated normalcy in most areas including the resumption of daily flights to Tigray's major towns including the capital Mekelle.
“I believe we have gone beyond the point of no return,” said Obasanjo. “I believe the guns are silenced.” He asked the Ethiopian parliament to declassify Tigray People's Liberation Front as a terrorist organization to help reduce political temperatures that have been in top gear over the last three years.
GAROWE ONLINE
