Human rights organisation Amnesty International said Eritrean troops allied with Ethiopia’s government have committed atrocities in Ethiopia’s northern region of Tigray in spite of a ceasefire.
The human rights group said this in a report released on Monday.
It added that Eritrean soldiers extrajudicially executed civilians and sexually enslaved women for months after the signing of a peace agreement.
Amnesty maintained that the soldiers were equally responsible for rape and looting, saying the acts amounted to war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity.
A two-year civil war over Ethiopia’s northernmost Tigray region resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and only ended in November with the agreement of a ceasefire between the Ethiopian government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) under the mediation of the African Union.
Amnesty International staff spoke to 11 women who said they had been raped or sexually enslaved after the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement was signed.
In addition, more than 40 women gave similar accounts to a local civil society organisation.
Some had been raped in a military camp run by Eritrean forces, others in their own homes or in homes occupied by the forces, the report said.
Amnesty said it also spoke to witnesses, survivors and family members of at least 20 civilians who were executed during house-to-house searches by Eritrean forces.
A local social worker counted more than 100 extrajudicial executions of civilians, though Amnesty has not been able to independently confirm the figure.
In total, several hundred thousand people died during the conflict since November 2020, according to the United Nations.
The research group International Crisis Group (ICG) has described the conflict in the populous country in the Horn of Africa with its 120 million inhabitants as currently one of the deadliest worldwide.
