The UNICEF statement is the first international confirmation that a kindergarten has been hit, as claimed by the rebel authorities in Tigray, while the Ethiopian government has assured that it is targeting only “military targets”.
“UNICEF strongly condemns the air strike in Mekele, capital of the Tigray region of Ethiopia. The strike hit a kindergarten, killing several children and injuring several”, denounced the executive director of the organization, Katherine Russell.
“Once again, children have paid a heavy price for an escalation of violence in northern Ethiopia. For nearly two years, children and their families in the region have suffered the horrors of this conflict. It must end”, she added.
The Ethiopian government did not react to these UN declarations.
Without mentioning the target hit, the European Commissioner for Crisis Management, Janez Lenarcic, “condemned” this strike “which resulted in the death of civilians” and “called for respect for international humanitarian law”. “Civilians are not a target,” he tweeted.
“Reports of airstrikes in Tigray that have caused civilian casualties are appalling. All parties must respect international humanitarian law and make the protection of civilians their priority,” said British Minister for Africa Vicky Ford.
– “Barbaric” –
An official at Ayder Hospital, the principal of the city of Mekele, said in a message to AFP on Friday that his establishment had received four dead, including two children, and nine injured.
Tigray’s state television said “seven civilians including three children” had been killed and released footage showing what looks like a devastated playground and a building with walls painted in brightly colored designs damaged.
According to the rebels, a plane “dropped bombs on a residential area and a kindergarten”. The Ethiopian government responded that its military aircraft only targeted “military sites” and accused the Tigrayan rebels of staging “to claim that the aircraft attacked civilians”.
Journalists do not have access to northern Ethiopia, making independent verification impossible. The mobile network and internet is also uncertain there and no official could be reached on Saturday in Tigray.
Fighting resumed on Wednesday in northern Ethiopia, ending a five-month truce between the two camps, which mutually reject responsibility for the return to hostilities.
Until the strike on Mekele on Friday, clashes were limited to two areas around the southeastern border of Tigray.
– Dreaded escalation –
The situation on the ground is difficult to assess, the combat theater areas being unreachable on Saturday. But the government in a statement accused the rebels on Saturday of “intensifying their attacks on several fronts”, without giving details.
“If the peace offer made by the government remains valid, the heroic national defense forces will coordinate and respond with their full efficiency and full capabilities,” the federal government said.
No rebel spokesperson could be reached to respond to these statements.
Friday’s strike marks an escalation feared by the international community, which is worried about a resumption of large-scale conflict and fears that the meager hopes of peace negotiations glimpsed since June, but never materialized, will be dashed.
As of Wednesday, many countries and international organizations, the United Nations, the United States and the European Union in the lead, had called for a cessation of hostilities and a peaceful resolution to the conflict.
This erupted in November 2020 when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sent the Ethiopian army to Tigray to dislodge the executive from the region, accusing him of having attacked military bases there after contesting for months the authority of the federal government.
After initially retreating, the rebels recaptured most of Tigray in a counter-offensive in mid-2021.
The toll of this murderous war, marked by numerous abuses committed by each side, is largely unknown. But it has displaced more than two million people and plunged hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians into near-famine conditions, according to the UN.
In early March, a few weeks before the truce, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said Ethiopian airstrikes had killed more than 300 civilians in the previous three months.
