Tigray youth group behind massacre of 600 people: Ethiopia

Bloomberg

An informal militia made up of Tigrayan youths killed at least 600 Ethiopian civilians identified as belonging to other
ethnic groups on November 9, according to a state-run human rights body.
The massacre occurred less than a week after a conflict started between federal forces and Tigrayan soldiers in the northern Ethiopian region.
The youths, known as Samri, and local security officers
went door-to-door and killed people of Amhara and Wolkait origin in Maikadra using
sticks, knives, machetes and hatchets or by strangling them with ropes, according to
the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission.
The death toll from the killings could rise as there were individuals unaccounted for at the time of EHRC’s visit to town in Tigray, it said. More than 40,000 civilians have fled to neighboring Sudan to seek refuge, according to the United Nations.
“The unimaginably atrocious crime committed against
civilians for no reason other than their ethnicity is heartbreaking,” Chief Commissioner Daniel Bekele said in the
report.
Debretsion Gebremichael, Tigray regional president, did not immediately respond to questions about the report’s findings.
The human rights group is funded by the national government and is based in Addis Ababa. Amnesty International said on Nov. 13 that hundreds of people may have been killed.
Federal troops invaded Tigray after months of tensions between Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, with Abiy accusing the region of attacking an army base. Ethiopian forces say they are closing in on Mekelle, the capital of Tigray.