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Mourning women in Dengolat: Eritrean soldiers are said to have carried out a massacre in the village
Photo: EDUARDO SOTERAS / AFP
After Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch (HRW) also accuses the Eritrean troops of having carried out a massacre in the Tigray conflict in Ethiopia.
It is estimated that Eritrean soldiers killed more than 200 civilians in Axum in the Tigray region in two days at the end of November, HRW said.
The UN should urgently launch an independent investigation into possible war crimes and crimes against humanity, urged the human rights organization.
In mid-November, Tigrays regional forces and militias withdrew from the city of Axum.
Ethiopian and Eritrean troops then shelled the city.
Eyewitnesses reported how soldiers shot civilians at random, HRW said.
Looting took place for around a week.
Militias from Tigray and residents of Axum responded with an attack on Eritrean troops, which led to the two-day massacre.
HRW said it spoke by phone with 28 eyewitnesses and relatives of victims and examined videos of the attacks.
Amnesty International had previously investigated the Axum massacre and, according to its own information, recorded the names of more than 240 people who died.
The government said it was investigating "credible reports" of atrocities and serious human rights violations in various parts of Tigray, including Axum.
Separately, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is investigating several incidents.
The government said the commission had signaled that it was ready to work with UN agencies.
In November, the government in Addis Ababa began a military offensive against the People's Liberation Front of Tigray (TPLF), which had been in power in the region of the same name in northern Ethiopia.
The background to this were years of tensions between the TPLF and the central government.
Other actors are now involved, including Eritrean troops and militias.
Hundreds of thousands of people in Tigray are dependent on humanitarian aid, but aid organizations have long had no full access to all those in need due to the security situation and bureaucratic hurdles.
The Ethiopian government recently promised again to change this.
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asa / dpa
