Like others in his village, Weldesamuel* fled into the mountains when he heard of the soldiers’ approach. He stayed there for four days, sleeping in caves and under bushes, as gunshots rang out and smoke rose from the valley below.
With nothing to eat and little to drink, some of his neighbours were drawn back down the slopes in search of food. “Not everyone returned,” said Weldesamuel.
When he went back, the soldiers had gone, leaving a trail of bodies and burnt-out houses. The dead included Weldesamuel’s father, an elderly priest, who was too frail to scramble up to the relative safety of the mountains.
He was found at the gate of his house, his hands gripping a Bible and a cross. “They just left the corpses lying there,” said Weldesamuel.
Details are still emerging of this massacre at Mariam Shewito, Endabagerima, Gendebta and other villages near Adwa, a town in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region. In late October, this area of ravines and cliffs was engulfed by fierce fighting, as rebel Tigray forces tried to beat back an advance by Ethiopia’s federal military and its Eritrean allies.
It would be one of the last battles of a bloody, two-year-long war. As Weldesamuel and his neighbours hid in the hills, negotiators from Tigray and the federal government were cloistered in a South African foreign ministry building in Pretoria 2,850 miles (4,500km) away, hammering out the final details of a ceasefire. It was signed on 2 November, formally ending the war.
More than five months later, journalists are still barred from travelling to Tigray, but the Guardian managed to talk to survivors of the killings near Adwa by phone. They said Eritrean troops turned off the main asphalt road leading out of the town on 25 October, after suffering heavy casualties, and took their frustration out on the local population.
In some places, they killed everyone they found; in others, they targeted men and boys.
The first house they reached belonged to Gebremariam Nigusse, a local elder, who lived in Mariam Shewito, near the road. Eritrean soldiers shot him and three of his children, his granddaughter, his son-in-law and his pregnant daughter-in-law, according to neighbours and relatives.
“The house was burnt, the property was looted, the people were killed,” said one of Gebremariam’s surviving children, who was in Adwa at the time. “They left nothing unscathed.”
Afterwards, the Eritrean soldiers pushed deeper into the countryside and down the road into other villages, looting and killing over the course of several days, survivors said.
One tally compiled by a local resident puts the number of dead at 143. The youngest is a toddler named Dawit Weldu, killed alongside his eight-year-old brother, Kidus, and his mother, a teacher called Letemichael, in the Rahiya area. His father was also killed, in nearby Adi Bechi.
Another list drawn up by survivors identifies 91 people in the area around Mariam Shewito alone. The true number could be higher as some bodies have not been identified, residents said.
Many of those who fled to the nearby mountains watched helplessly from their hiding places as their relatives were rounded up and murdered.
In Mariam Shewito, Gebreyohannes saw four Eritrean soldiers lead his 15-year-old son, Samson, away from their house to a nearby gorge where they shot him. “It was right in front of me,” says Gebreyohannes. “They couldn’t see me, but I could see them. When he fell to the ground, he convulsed, and then he died. I felt a bitter sadness and my eyes were swollen from crying.”
He said Samson was an “exemplary student” who sold eggs and doughnuts to help his family with money. Gebreyohannes thought the soldiers would spare Samson due to his young age, so told him to stay in the house while the rest of the family fled.
Another Mariam Shewito resident, Gebrekidan, could also see the massacre unfolding below him while he hid on a mountain slope. He watched Eritrean troops bind the hands of his father, uncle and two cousins, take them to a riverbank and shoot them.
Gebrekidan could hear the Eritrean soldiers shouting accusations at his relatives. “They said, ‘You are contributing to the TDF, you are giving food to the TDF,’” he said, using an acronym for the Tigray Defence Forces, the rebel fighting force.
Like other residents, Gebrekidan identified the soldiers as Eritrean based on their distinctive uniforms and by the fact they were speaking fluent Tigrinya, the language native to both Tigray and Eritrea.
In the village of Endabagerima, the 39-year-old Haweriya Gebregezabher was killed with six other people on 27 October, said his wife, Frehiwot. Their 11-year-old son discovered the bodies, dumped in a river storm drain, the next day while grazing the family’s cattle.
After the killings, Eritrean troops remained in the area and prevented relatives from searching for their missing loved ones and burying the bodies, according to residents. Left exposed, many of the corpses were mauled by wild animals.
Equbay, a Mariam Shewito resident, discovered the body of his son, Guesh, “five or six days” after he had been killed. Only his hands, feet and head remained, next to his tattered clothes and university ID. “The hyenas had eaten the rest,” said Equbay.
Today villagers are still discovering bones and other remains in the area. “You see them in the bushes and fields when you go out walking,” said a resident.
Eritrean soldiers eventually pulled out of the area in mid-January, more than two months after the signing of the ceasefire and a subsequent implementation accord that provided for the withdrawal of “foreign” and non-federal forces from Tigray.
Frehiwot’s husband was buried in a mass ceremony at Abune Libanos, a local church, on 15 January. Others buried that day include 58-year-old Weldegirogis Gebremariam, who left the mountain and returned to his house during the killings.
Weldegirogis’s daughter discovered him with a gunshot in his head on 30 October, next to the body of his friend, Gebremeskal Gebrekidan. Both were temporarily buried close to their homes before they could be interred at the church.
All sides have been accused of human rights abuses since war erupted in northern Ethiopia in November 2020. The most severe allegations have been levelled at Eritrean troops, who investigators say kept women as sex slaves and carried out killings.
The biggest massacre of the war took place in the holy city of Axum, just 15km from Adwa, soon after hostilities started, when Eritrean soldiers massacred hundreds of men and boys over a 24-hour period, according to Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, in apparent retaliation for an attack by local militia members.
Eritrean soldiers were deeply involved in the war from its outset, but the Ethiopian prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, would not admit their presence in Tigray until March 2021, several months after they entered the region.
His government is yet to acknowledge the role Eritrean troops played in the last round of major fighting, which started in August and lasted until November’s ceasefire.
Now the fighting has stopped, Ethiopia’s government has started a transitional justice process it says will deliver accountability for human rights abuses. The Ministry of Justice has proposed a process based on Ethiopia’s domestic courts, rather than an international tribunal as in other conflicts such as Yugoslavia.
But Ethiopia’s national institutions have no power to prosecute foreign soldiers back in Eritrea, a separate sovereign country, whose autocratic leader has dismissed allegations against his military as a “fantasy”. As a result, many human rights experts believe the chances of justice for crimes committed by Eritrean troops are slim.
Nonetheless, the survivors of killings in the hills around Adwa believe the perpetrators will be brought to justice. This includes the daughter of Gebremariam Nigusse, the elder whose family home was the first targeted by the soldiers.
Over a crackling phone line, she read out a poem she had written about her family’s tragedy:
“It dusked without dawning,
O family, how could it be in vain,
Your breath passed away in agony,
You couldn’t find help, it all happened in a rush,
They went from house to house and killed you, then left,
You became an outlet for the hate that they harboured.
……
Is it wind or storm or rapids that have taken you?
Where was the mediator who is old of age?
Have you become victims of one who is used to the blood of men?
May justice await those who did this crime.”
*First names only have been used to protect identities
