ICERAS

Among those most at risk are 96,000 Eritrean refugees sheltering in four camps in Tigray, cut off from desperately needed relief supplies.

“We are surrounded by war, and we can’t move,” one Eritrean refugee told The New Humanitarian from Mai-Aini camp.

Unlike most places in the region – where communications have been blacked out by the Ethiopian government – Mai-Aini, located in southern Tigray, has at least some mobile phone coverage.

The refugee told TNH there was little food or fuel to run the camp’s water pumps, and added that fleeing further away from the conflict zone had become even harder due to vehicles being banned on the roads and the banks being shut.

“Even if our families send us money, we cannot get it as the banks are closed,” said a second Eritrean refugee, again speaking from Mai-Aini by phone.

The conflict, which pits the region’s powerful ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), against a federal government determined to halt a defiant rebellion, has cut humanitarian access to both refugees and war-affected Tigrayans. It has also forced close to 45,000 people – mostly Ethiopian Tigrayans – to flee into neighbouring Sudan.

Ethiopia has been a longstanding home to around 178,000 Eritrean refugees fleeing political persecution, economic hardship, and compulsory military service at home.

An added threat to the refugees in Tigray is the direct involvement in the conflict of neighbouring Eritrea – the TPLF’s arch-enemy – on the side of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and the federal government.

The refugees are regarded as “traitors” by the hardline government of Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki, and there have been accounts of refugees being abducted by the Eritrean army and taken back across the border.

“We have heard the same worrying reports, but the difficulty of communication with the region means it’s very hard to verify any information,” Babar Baloch, a spokesperson for the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, told TNH.

Rockets fired from Tigray hit the Eritrean capital, Asmara, on Sunday. It was the third recent rocket attack, but the TPLF only claimed responsibility for the first strike two weeks ago readmore