Addis Ababa, Ethiopia/Madrid, Spain
Reuters
Three employees working for the Spanish branch of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) were killed by unknown assailants in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, the medical charity said on Friday.
MSF-Spain lost contact with a vehicle carrying the team on Thursday afternoon, it said in a statement. “This morning the vehicle was found empty and a few metres away, their lifeless bodies.”
“We condemn this attack on our colleagues in the strongest possible terms and will be relentless in understanding what happened,” the statement said.
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) emergency co-ordinator Maria Hernandez, killed by unknown assailants in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, is seen in unknown location in this image released by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on 25th June. PICTURE: Medecins Sans Frontieres/Handout via Reuters.
It identified the victims as emergency co-ordinator Maria Hernandez, 35, from Madrid, assistant co-ordinator Yohannes Halefom Reda, 31, from Ethiopia, and their Ethiopian driver Tedros Gebremariam Gebremichael, also 31.
They are among at least 12 aid workers reported killed since fighting broke out in November between Ethiopia’s military and forces loyal to the region’s former ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. The conflict has killed thousands of people and displaced more than two million.
Ethiopia’s foreign ministry sent condolences via Twitter, but said it had been urging aid agencies to secure military escorts in the area. The ministry said TPLF forces were active in the town of Abiy Addi where the attack occurred. MSF did not confirm the location.
A TPLF spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.
Spain’s foreign ministry said it was engaging with the aid agency and the Ethiopian Government on the attack.
“A heartfelt hug to the family and colleagues of Maria…who has been murdered in Ethiopia where she was helping the population,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez wrote on Twitter, also sending condolences to the families of Yohannes and Tedros.
The US State Department called for an independent investigation of the killings and said the Ethiopian Government “ultimately bears full responsibility for ensuring the safety of humanitarian workers.”
Meanwhile, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus accused authorities in Ethiopia on Friday of blocking ambulances from reaching scores of victims of an air strike this week, a rare case of speaking out in his official capacity about the conflict in his homeland.
Tedros, who is an ethnic Tigrayan and former Ethiopian Cabinet minister, referred in his opening remarks at a WHO briefing to the air strike this week which hit a crowded market in his native region. The federal government has been waging war against fighters loyal to the former regional authorities since last year.
“Ambulances were blocked for more than a day from attending the scene and evacuating the wounded for medical care,” Tedros said.
“WHO is currently providing life-saving trauma and surgical supplies to a hospital that is treating survivors who were able to reach care,” Tedros said. “Attacks on civilians anywhere are completely unacceptable and so is denying them access to immediate care, because we lose lives.”
Tedros has occasionally tweeted about the conflict in Tigray, but has rarely mentioned it while speaking publicly in his official capacity as head of the WHO.
Ethiopia’s government has accused him in the past of supporting its opponents in the Tigray conflict, the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front, which he previously represented as Ethiopia’s health minister and foreign minister.
Ethiopia’s military has denied that any civilians were among those killed in the air strike on the town of Togoga near the regional capital Mekelle. A military spokesman said on Thursday that all those struck were combatants, wearing civilian clothes.
Residents and doctors, however, have said that women and children were among the dead and wounded. A health official working on the response to the air strike said on Friday the death toll had risen to 64 killed, with 180 other people wounded.
The incident was one of the deadliest in months in a conflict in which the government had said major fighting largely ended last year.
It happened after residents described an increase in fighting in recent days, and fell on the anniversary of a 1988 air strike by Ethiopia’s then-ruling communists that killed hundreds of civilians, an event widely commemorated in Tigray.
– With PETER GRAFF, MICHAEL SHIELDS and STEPHANIE NEBEHAY
