sarcasm wrote: ↑18 Mar 2022, 14:56
‘Finish Them Off’: Aid Workers, Found on Battlefield, Executed by Soldiers
Three employees of Doctors Without Borders set out to rescue the wounded in a war zone in northern Ethiopia. Their fate shows the treacherous path for many aid workers in conflict zones.
This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
As the fight intensified in northern Ethiopia in June last year, three aid workers from Doctors Without Borders jumped into their four-wheel drive and raced across the battle-scarred landscape, searching for casualties.
Hours later they vanished. The aid workers stopped answering their satellite phone. A tracking device showed their vehicle making a sudden U-turn, then stopping. Colleagues frantically tried to locate them.
The next day they were found dead, their bullet-riddled bodies sprawled on a dusty roadside near their burned-out vehicle: María Hernández, a 35-year-old Spaniard and conflict veteran, in a bloodstained white bib with the Doctors Without Borders logo; Yohannes Halefom, a 32-year-old Ethiopian medic, face down in the dirt; and their Ethiopian driver Tedros Gebremariam, 31, lying on the road about 300 yards away.
Doctors Without Borders, widely known by its French name, Médecins Sans Frontières, immediately denounced the killings as “brutal murder” but did not identify any culprit. Now, one is coming into view.
Investigators, senior aid officials and Ethiopian soldiers interviewed by the Times said the three aid workers were gunned down by retreating Ethiopian government troops on the orders of a commander who was infuriated to find them in an active combat zone.
“He said, ‘Finish them off’,” said Capt. Yetneberk Tesfaye of the Ethiopian National Defense Force, who said he heard the command over the radio.
Continue reading at New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/17/worl ... illed.html
Source: The Guardian – 25 June 2021
Three aid workers found dead in Tigray, says Médecins Sans Frontières
MSF says it condemns attack on colleagues ‘in strongest possible terms’ after bodies found near car
Convoy of trucks
A convoy of MSF trucks carrying medical supplies in Tigray, northern Ethiopia, in May. Photograph: Ben Curtis/AP
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Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
About this content
Kaamil Ahmed
Fri 25 Jun 2021 19.09 BST
Three aid workers who had been working in Ethiopia’s Tigray region have been found dead, their organisation, Médecins Sans Frontières, announced on Friday.
MSF said it had lost contact with the workers while they were travelling on Thursday afternoon. Their bodies were found near their empty car this morning.
The workers were Maria Hernández, an emergency coordinator from Spain, and Yohannes Halefom Reda, an assistant coordinator, and Tedros Gebremariam Gebremichael, an MSF driver, both Ethiopian.
“No words can truly convey all our sadness, shock and outrage against this horrific attack,” the MSF said. “Nor can words soothe the loss and suffering of their families and loved ones, to whom we relay our deepest sympathy and condolences.
“We condemn this attack on our colleagues in the strongest possible terms and will be relentless in understanding what happened. Maria, Yohannes and Tedros were in Tigray providing assistance to people and it is unthinkable that they paid for this work with their lives,” MSF said in a statement.
MSF has been active in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, the focus of a government offensive against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front since last year. In March the organisation said that in the aftermath of an ambush on the army, its workers had witnessed soldiers carrying out extrajudicial killings, while their own driver was beaten with the [deleted] of a gun and also threatened with death.
Reports of rights abuses have been widespread in Tigray and the warring parties have been accused by human rights groups of occupying schools and attacking hospitals.
Earlier this month the Ethiopian aid worker Negasi Kidane was killed by a stray bullet, according to his employer, the Italian charity International Committee for the Development of Peoples. In May, another Ethiopian working with USAid was also killed.
“Every day humanitarian workers risk their own lives to help those in dire need because of man-made conflicts and natural disasters,” USAid’s chief, Samantha Power, said in a statement.
“We hope that his courage and sacrifice, and that of other humanitarian workers intimidated, threatened, harmed, or killed in the Tigray region will not be in vain, as we work with the people of Ethiopia toward a peaceful resolution and a brighter future.”
At least 11 aid workers have been killed in Tigray since November 2020.