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Children suffer as fighting in Ethiopia’s Tigray drags on

Conflict raging in remote Tigrayan towns leaves civilians with life-changing injuries and healthcare centres devastated.

Fighters loyal to the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) walk along a street in the town of Hawzen, in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia. [Ben Curtis/AP Photo]
Published On 6 Jun 2021

The battle for Hawzen is part of a larger war in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region between the government’s forces and Tigrayan fighters that has led to massacres, gang rapes and the flight of more than 2 million of the region’s 6 million people. While the government now holds many urban centres, fierce fighting continues in remote rural towns like Hawzen.

As the two sides fight, civilians, and especially children, are suffering. More and more children are caught up in shelling in Hawzen and other nearby areas, with at least 32 admitted to the Ayder Hospital in the regional capital Mekele for blast injuries from December to April.

Thirteen had limbs amputated, according to official records.

Haftom Gebru, a 12-year-old boy from Hawzen, was wounded by shrapnel in fighting during Orthodox Easter. An artillery shell hit a pile of stones in the family’s compound that then ricocheted in the boy’s direction. When his 60-year-old father, Gebru Welde Abrha, saw the boy’s wounded left hand, he knew it would have to be amputated.

“I am so sad I can’t explain it,” the father said in a hospital ward, as his son looked angrily into the distance. “I feel it deeply.”

Haftom Gebretsadik, a 17-year-old from Freweini near Hawzen, was also wounded by an artillery round that struck his home in March. He quietly looked at the stump on his right arm and shook his head.

“I am very worried,” he said. “How can I work?”

Some of the young victims of blast trauma might have kept their limbs if they had received first aid at the nearest health centres. But such facilities are shells right now – systematically looted, vandalised and turned upside down.

Eritrean soldiers set up camp in the Hawzen Primary Hospital, which once boasted of equipment ranging from X-ray machines to baby incubators. Now it is trashed and looted.

“It’s a bad feeling I have as a Tigrayan,” said the now-jobless technician, 27-year-old Misigna Hagos.

“This hospital used to serve thousands of people… Now it’s destroyed.”

Haftom Gebretsadik, a 17-year-old from Freweini, near Hawzen, sits on his bed at the Ayder Referral Hospital in Mekele, in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia. He had his right hand amputated and lost fingers on his left after an artillery round struck his home in March. [Ben Curtis/AP Photo]
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People prepare to depart on a bus as a fighter loyal to the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) stands guard in Hawzen. [Ben Curtis/AP Photo]
The city of Mekele is seen through a bullet hole in a window of the Ayder Referral Hospital. [Ben Curtis)/AP Photo]
A woman leads a blind man past destroyed furniture and other items in the driveway of a hospital in Hawzen which was damaged and looted by Eritrean soldiers who used it as a base. [Ben Curtis/AP Photo]
Haftom Gebru, 12, was wounded and had his hand amputated after an artillery shell hit a pile of stones in his family's compound in Hawzen. His father, Gebru Welde Abrha, 60, comforts him as he lies in his hospital bed in Mekele. [Ben Curtis/AP Photo]
Gebremedhin Gebreslassie, 12, who fled from fighting in Hawzen, stands next to a metal shack at a reception centre for internally displaced people in Mekele. Residents of Hawzen, a town of a few thousand people, said it has seen fighting four times since November. [Ben Curtis/AP Photo]
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Fighters loyal to the TPLF walk past women selling foodstuffs on the street in Hawzen. As the TPLF and the government forces fight, civilians, and especially children, are suffering heavily. [Ben Curtis/AP Photo]
Desalegn Gebreselassie, 15, whose foot was injured when a grenade exploded in his town of Edaga Hamus, sits in his wheelchair as he recovers at the Ayder Referral Hospital in Mekele. [Ben Curtis/AP Photo]
A destroyed tank sits by the side of a road leading to Abi Adi, in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia. [Ben Curtis/AP Photo]