Day: June 23, 2021

A bomb blast killed dozens of people Tuesday at a market in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, as new fighting flared up in areas outside the regional capital, Mekelle.

The bomb went off in the town of Togoga west of Mekelle at about 1 p.m. local time. There were conflicting reports on whether the blast was the result of a plane dropping a bomb or artillery shells hitting the market.

Local medical officials that at least 43 people were killed, with dozens of others wounded.

Berhan Ghebrehiwet, who sells coffee for a living, said her hand was wounded during the attack.

“First they bombed the market and later they continue bombing the houses. My hand was injured from the bombing. I am suffering a lot and it is causing me great pain,” she told a reporter for VOA’s Horn of Africa Service at Hyder Hospital in Mekelle.

Health workers said Ethiopian soldiers blocked ambulances from reaching the scene of the attack.

Negasi Berhane, a Mekelle resident who suffered leg injuries in the attack, said he saw three people die in front of him, with many others left to suffer.

Ambulance driver Kahsu Tsegay told VOA he unsuccessfully tried five times to transport injured civilians to the hospital. The driver said he was barred from transporting wounded people on the grounds they had tried to help Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) fighters.

Reuters news agency says an Ethiopian military spokesman, Colonel Getnet Adane, denied the military was blocking ambulances.

Later Wednesday, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it helped the Ethiopian Red Cross Society and other parties evacuate wounded people from Togoga and transport them to a hospital in Mekelle.

“We cannot stress enough how vital it is for the medical mission to be respected and protected at all times,” ICRC official Nicolas von Arx said in a statement.

The U.S. State Department released a statement Wednesday, saying, “We strongly condemn this reprehensible act.” It said it was “gravely concerned” by the reports of the airstrike on the market.

State Department spokesman Ned Price urged Ethiopian authorities to “ensure full and unhindered medical access to the victims immediately.”

Ethiopian defense forces commander General Berhanu Jula denied the military attacked the market. The general said the attack was targeting an armed group, not civilians.

Asked if he saw armed people during the bombing, Mekelle resident Negasi said he only saw civilians.

On Tuesday, residents said new fighting had erupted elsewhere in Tigray. Residents said TPLF fighters had entered towns north of the capital, only to withdraw within hours.

Tigray has been embroiled in conflict since November, when the Ethiopian military launched an offensive to oust the ruling TPLF. Eritrea’s military has been helping Ethiopian troops battle the TPLF in the ongoing dispute.

Thousands of people have been killed and some 2 million others have fled their homes to escape the violence since fighting erupted.

Source: Voice of America

Medical aid group Doctors Without Borders says tens of thousands of people in Cameroon’s western regions have been deprived of lifesaving healthcare since December, when authorities stopped their services. Cameroon accused the aid group of being too close to anglophone separatists, which the group denies.

Doctors Without Borders says over 1.4 million people in Cameroon’s restive western regions need humanitarian support, with access to healthcare extremely limited.

The coordinator for the group’s operations in Central Africa, Emmanuel Lampaert, said that’s due to insecurity, lockdowns, and the targeting of health facilities.

He said mortality among vulnerable groups, such as women and children, has increased, and the government’s suspension of their support since December has made the situation even worse.

“Humanitarian and health needs have surges due to the armed violence and notably for the population and several hundreds of thousands of them who have to flee their houses, and who have barriers to access health care. Concretely speaking, this means suffering from malaria or diarrhea for children in the bush, women in labor who are unable to reach health facilities, people suffering from acute respiratory infections, women victims of sexual violence and so on,” said Lampaert.

Cameroon’s government in 2020 accused Doctors Without Borders of being too close to separatists who are fighting to create an independent English-speaking state in the majority French speaking country.

Lampaert denied the accusation and said their only goal is to save lives.

“Responding to urgent health needs is our mere and only concern. Viruses, bullets, and infections do not care which side of the crisis one is on and neither do the Doctors Without Borders. That is our DNA and that is the DNA of principled humanitarian medical action,” he said.

When contacted by a reporter, Cameroon officials would not say when the aid group, known by its French initials MSF, might be allowed to resume work in the western regions.

Cameroon’s health ministry last week reported about 30 percent of hospitals in the regions are no longer functioning due to separatist attacks.

The health ministry said several hundred health care workers have fled the separatist conflict areas in the past month alone.

Philip Ambe is a government health worker who fled flighting in the northwest town of Bafut last Sunday.

Speaking from the town of Dschang, he said MSF’s work was professional and authorities should allow them to resume saving lives.

“The government does not need to stay mute on this issue [over asking MSF to resume work] again. The situation is very pathetic. People can no longer live in the comfort of their bedrooms. People were kidnapped. Some are in the bush. It is moving from bad to worse. The only way out is dialogue so that things should come back to normal.”

MSF was one of the few groups offering free emergency care to Cameroon’s northwest and southwest populations since 2018.

MSF says community health workers it supported last year conducted over to 150,000 consultations for communities in both regions.

And a free ambulance service it initiated transported over a thousand women in labor to hospitals.

Violence erupted in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions in 2017 when teachers and lawyers protested alleged discrimination at the hands of the French-speaking majority.

The military reacted with a crackdown and separatist groups took up arms, claiming that they were protecting civilians.

The U.N. says 3,000 people have since been killed and more than 750,000 displaced both internally and to neighboring Nigeria.

Source: Voice of America