Ethiopians who have escaped the intense fighting in their northern homeland of Tigray by fleeing into Sudan are safe, but the terrifying nightmare of what they witnessed continues to haunt them.
“I saw bodies dismembered by the explosions,” said Ganet Gazerdier, a 75-year-old sitting alone in the dust at eastern Sudan’s Um Raquba Refugee Camp, newly opened to cope with a sudden influx of more than 27,000 people fleeing airstrikes, artillery barrages and massacres in Ethiopia.
“Other bodies were rotting, lying on the road, murdered with a knife,” she added.
Photo: AFP
Distraught at having been forced to flee their homes, traumatized by becoming separated from family members in the mad rush and horrified after witnessing killings, refugees wander as if dazed in the camp.
“I lived with my three daughters,” said Gazerdier, dressed in a blue dress and white headscarf to protect her from the blazing sun. “When the shells started to rain down on our house, we all panicked and fled in the dark.”
The bombardment not only destroyed her house in Humera, the site of reportedly some of the heaviest fighting, but also separated her from her family.
Everyone scattered and she has yet to make contact with them.
She has found some help at the camp, 80km from the border, but conditions are rough, with only basic emergency relief set up.
For the Ethiopians who arrive, there is an initial sense of relief that they are safe.
However, for many, a sense of guilt soon kicks in, as they sit and wait in the hope that those they love might also turn up.
To escape, Messah Geidi split from his wife and four-year-old son — and he cannot forgive himself.
“I don’t know where they are, and if they are still alive,” he said.
Geidi comes from Mai-Kadra, where Amnesty International said last week that “scores, and likely hundreds, of people were stabbed or hacked to death.”
“I fled Mai-Kadra, because the army slaughtered the young people like sheep,” Geidi said.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said that the border area faces an emergency.
“A full-scale humanitarian crisis is unfolding,” UNHCR spokesman Babar Baloch said, adding that about 4,000 people were fleeing across the frontier each day.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including