UN Says Drone Strikes Killed at Least 15 Civilians in Eastern Amhara in One Week

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A paved main road running through the small town of Wurgessa in North Wollo, with minibuses and a bajaj parked along the street, shop signs and palm trees on the right, and a steep green mountainside rising behind under a cloudy sky, seen through a vehicle windscreen.

The main road through Wurgessa, in the Habru district of North Wollo, in 2019. Residents told DW Amharic that drones circled the town on Thursday. [file photo] [Wikimedia Commons, Jocofilink, CC BY-SA 4.0]

Drone strikes in the eastern part of Ethiopia’s Amhara region killed at least 15 civilians and wounded several others, including children, between Oct. 15 and Oct. 21, the UN humanitarian office said on Friday, citing reports from its partners, as residents of North and South Wollo told DW Amharic that drones had circled their towns from Thursday morning until midnight.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said schools were also damaged. In Tigray, it said, humanitarian partners have reported several drone strikes that hit civilians and essential infrastructure, among them a strike on Wednesday that hit a warehouse belonging to a local aid group, and the damage and the loss of supplies there are still being assessed. Speaking at the daily briefing in New York on Friday, UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric read out the same report but said only that the strikes in Amhara “killed and injured several civilians, including children,” and he added that “the parties must protect civilians and civilian infrastructure, as dictated by international humanitarian law.” The UN did not name the places that were hit or say who carried out the strikes. Addis Standard, DW and other outlets have reported for more than two years that the federal army uses armed drones in its war with Fano forces in Amhara.

Residents in Wollo gave DW Amharic a picture of what that looks like from the ground. People in Wurgessa told the broadcaster that a drone flew over Wurgessa and Wuchale from about 10 a.m. on Thursday until midnight, and that a strike on Wurgessa that day hit a spot where Fano fighters had set up heavy weapons. They said the people killed there were fighters, though they did not know how many. In Wegdi, in South Wollo, a witness said drones struck twice on Thursday, once at about 10 a.m. and again in the afternoon, and that one bomb landed in a muddy marsh not far from homes and sank into the ground. Two people were hurt, the witness said, but their wounds were not life-threatening.

The residents said that when the drones are overhead people are forced to stay inside their homes. One of them told DW that no fighting had started yet in the places he named, but that seeing the movement of armed men and the drones made people fear a battle was coming. A resident of Sanqa kebele, west of Woldia, told DW that after a quiet few days heavy weapons fire had started on Friday and then stopped, that a drone had also struck the area on Monday at a spot people believed Fano fighters were using, and that many people had been killed over time by shells fired during the fighting around them. DW said it could not reach people easily because phone lines in several parts of Wollo were not working well.

The Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute said in its weekly review that fighting between the Ethiopian army and the Amhara Fano National Movement had stopped traffic on Thursday on the main road from Woldia to Bahir Dar, between Istayish and Sanqa, and that reports on whether traffic had resumed were conflicting.

The Ethiopian Human Rights Council (EHRCO) said in a statement on Thursday, as reported by DW Amharic, that civilians in areas where armed groups are active keep being killed, wounded, abducted and driven from their homes, and that “the right of citizens to life must be respected.”

The Ethiopian army has not commented on the strikes in Wollo or on the UN report.

On X, accounts that track the war reported more strikes, and none of their claims could be checked. The Ethiopian Conflict Map (@Ethiomapping) wrote on Friday of “drone strike campaigns in both S. and N. Wello (Muja, Sanka, Wurgessa, Ambassel mountains, Wegdi) since yesterday” and said Fano’s presence in Wurgessa had spread to Girana and Wuchale. Amhara War Updates (@AmharaWarUpdate) said a drone hit a restaurant at lunchtime on Oct. 20 in Densa town, in South Wollo’s Mehal Sayint woreda, killing four people, among them two bank security guards and a student, and wounding seven, including an 8-year-old child. Translations from Amharic are Zegabi’s. Zegabi has not verified the claims made in these posts.

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