Ethiopian authorities confirmed on Monday that soldiers and police were involved in rapes committed in November in the war-torn province of Tigray.
An investigation has uncovered 116 testimonies of rape committed during a large-scale operation to seize the city of Axum in November, according to the attorney general.
According to the same source, among the perpetrators were military and police.
The Attorney General said that on November 27, 93 people were killed in fighting, most of them fighters of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), not civilians.
Earlier this year, in a report following a months-long investigation into the Tigray conflict, Amnesty International said it had been able to name 240 civilians killed and blamed the Ethiopian Federal Armed Forces and the Ethiopian army. .
In early November, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abi Ahmed, who had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, announced that he had ordered the federal army to intervene in Tigray to arrest and disarm the TPLF leadership. camps of the federal forces. The TPLF, at the helm of the province until recently, was practically in conflict with the central government after losing power at the federal level three years ago.
Although Addis Ababa declared its “victory” in the conflict in late November, the clashes continued. The province of Tigray has suffered enormous damage, the opposition has claimed tens of thousands of dead, and hundreds of thousands have been displaced and displaced.
