‘It’s a nightmare’: Their homeland racked by war, famine, Seattle’s Tigrayan community looks for answers - Seattle Times
Posted: 16 Aug 2021, 19:13
Fissaha Tassaw can’t sleep. Danait Tafere is losing her hair. Ribka Alem feels numb.
These are horrible times for Seattle’s Tigrayan community.
The Tigrayan population here, among the largest in the country, has spent the last nine months in a dreadful limbo, fearing and sometimes learning the worst, while all the time waiting, waiting, waiting for news from family as their homeland is consumed by war and famine.
Phone and internet communications in Tigray, a mountainous region in northern Ethiopia, have been cut off.
On Nov. 4, 2020, as the United States waited anxiously for the results of the prior day’s presidential election, rebels in Tigray attacked an Ethiopian military base. Ethiopia’s president responded immediately, launching a military operation in Tigray. He said it would be over within weeks, but it has led to months of ongoing war.
According to the United Nations: The fighting has displaced 1.7 million people. It has caused the worst famine anywhere in the world in at least a decade, with 400,000 people in famine conditions and 1.8 million more at risk of following them. There have been more than 1,200 reports of sexual violence, but that is likely “just a fraction of the actual number of cases in a conflict that is impacting women and children especially hard.”
At least 9,600 civilians have been killed, but that is an undercount, “only the tip of the iceberg,” according to researchers at Belgium’s Ghent University.
Continue reading https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-ne ... r-answers/
These are horrible times for Seattle’s Tigrayan community.
The Tigrayan population here, among the largest in the country, has spent the last nine months in a dreadful limbo, fearing and sometimes learning the worst, while all the time waiting, waiting, waiting for news from family as their homeland is consumed by war and famine.
Phone and internet communications in Tigray, a mountainous region in northern Ethiopia, have been cut off.
On Nov. 4, 2020, as the United States waited anxiously for the results of the prior day’s presidential election, rebels in Tigray attacked an Ethiopian military base. Ethiopia’s president responded immediately, launching a military operation in Tigray. He said it would be over within weeks, but it has led to months of ongoing war.
According to the United Nations: The fighting has displaced 1.7 million people. It has caused the worst famine anywhere in the world in at least a decade, with 400,000 people in famine conditions and 1.8 million more at risk of following them. There have been more than 1,200 reports of sexual violence, but that is likely “just a fraction of the actual number of cases in a conflict that is impacting women and children especially hard.”
At least 9,600 civilians have been killed, but that is an undercount, “only the tip of the iceberg,” according to researchers at Belgium’s Ghent University.
Continue reading https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-ne ... r-answers/
