The TPLF-led Government of Tigraiy region in Etiyopiya has been itching for a fight against the Federal Government of Etiyopiya for sometime. According to Sekuture Getachew (TPLF's Spokesperson), the TPLF, on November 03, 2020, conducted a sudden preemptive military attack on Etiyopiya' s Northern Command that was stationed in Tigraiy after the 1998-2000 Etiyo-Eritrean border war. TPLF killed an unknown number of its compatriot defense forces, poisoned their commander, kept hostage many of the leaders in the army command post, sabotaged their central means of communications, and took the most important of their armaments. Some sections of the army resisted TPLF's sudden and unimaginable attacks while at the same time withdrew/fled to Eritrea.
Eritrea received well some sections of the Etiyopiyan Northern Command, helped them recuperate, fed and armed those who needed it, allowed their most top military commanders come from Addis Ababa to Eritrea, and re-organize their forces to continue their mission of "law enforcement" in Tigraiy. According to Etiyopiya' s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed' s first report to his Parliament, Eritrean troops advanced no further than the borderlines delimited by the Border Commission. TPLF & Co. have from the beginning alleged (without any credible evidence) that Eritrean armed forces, Somali armed forces, and UAE drones, were in Tigraiy to subdue TPLF armed forces. They also claimed that the Etiyopiyan Federal Army together with the Special/militia forces of the Amhara Kellil, the Afar Kellil, and the Somali Kellil have destroyed the Tigraiy army and "committed genocide".
If there is war, sadly, there could be casualties; it is part of the nature of war. According to the U.S. Department of Defense Law of War Manual,, 2016,
https://dod.defense.gov/Portals/1/Docum ... 172036-1901.4.2.1. Nature of War – Violence and Suffering. War has been described as a violent clash of interests characterized by the use of force.58 The fact that violence is an essential element of war has been viewed as important in understanding the nature of war.59 The violent nature of war has also meant that suffering has been an unfortunate and tragic, but unavoidable consequence of war.
And in war, there is always very limited and unreliable information. That is why that our sources of information on war casualties are most of the times estimates. All these maxims do apply to the Tigraiy war, too. The main question is, which estimates are reasonably acceptable or unacceptable. To me an estimate of war casualties is reasonable if it openly states its method of reaching at that amount, so that others could fairly easily confirm or reject it. For example, if somebody claims 750 civilians were killed in Aksum, one would go to that place and seek information from those who had first-hand knowledge, or identifiable source, about it in Aksum, etc.
Three Tigraiyan opposition parties (Tigraiy Independence Party (TIP), Salsaiy Weyane Tigraiy (SaWeT), and National Congress of Great Tigraiy (Baytona)) jointly declared that the estimated civilian casualties of the war in Tigraiy (that started in November 04, 2020) amounts to 52,000. https://eritreahub.org/tigray-oppositio ... ian-deaths
Is this figure reasonably acceptable? This 52,000 figure is suspicious because it lacks the method of how the parties reached at the estimated number. Not only that, other sources of information do give us estimates far smaller than the three parties' estimate.
Another source estimates the war's civilian casualties to range from 688 to 2647. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualtie ... Tigray_War
A third source, with explicit details of description of victims and sources, estimates the total figure of casualties down to 1,037.https://www.tghat.com/victim-list/
I feel that the three parties have exaggerated the number of civilian casualties of the war in Tigraiy out of proportions---i.e. multiplied the lower figures by 20 to 50 times, of course, for their ulterior motives. Shame on them.