No fewer than 64 people were killed and a further 180 were injured in an air strike on a market in Ethiopia’s war-torn northern Tigray region, a local health officer in the country has confirmed.
This is coming even as the army has for the umpteenth time denied targeting civilians.
Africa Daily News, New York gathered that details of the bloody attack on Togoga town were too slow to emerge on Tuesday partly because soldiers initially blocked emergency workers from accessing the area.
However, yesterday’s reports have it that hospitals in Mekele were treating at least 73 people, including young children.
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Victims at the hospital suffered shrapnel wounds and burns, and in some cases doctors were forced to perform amputations to save lives.
The Ethiopian military admitted carrying out the attack but said it targeted rebel fighters, not civilians.
The health officer told reporters that at least 64 people had died.
‘The air strike was in the market area, so many, many people were injured,‘ said Mulu Atsbaha, an advisor to the Tigray regional administration on maternal and child health.
He said the toll had been collated from residents of Togoga and “confirmed with local leaders”.
Survivors spoke of huge devastation as aerial explosions tore through the busy market around 1 pm, killing and injuring dozens, reducing nearby homes to rubble and burying people under the ruins.
But Ethiopia’s military spokesman said rebel fighters dressed in civilian clothes, gathered in Togoga to celebrate ‘Martyr Day‘, were attacked.
‘We do not accept that this operation targeted civilians,’ Colonel Getnet Adane confirmed to reporters.
‘It is a clear fact that both the remnants of the TPLF and its militia dress in civilian clothes,’ he said, referring to the renegade former regional leadership.
Genet also denied the army targeted a market, adding that while it was market day on Tuesday, ‘in Ethiopia, people go to the markets in the morning, and by the afternoon they are usually deserted.’
AFRICA DAILY NEWS, NEW YORK
