8″ June 2021″ Tuesday ” ASMARA (HORN OBSERVER
– United Nations (UN) has said hundreds of Somali youths who were taken to Eretria for training had fought alongside Ethiopian forces in Tigray region.
The UN Rapporteur report on the human rights situation in Eritrea said that Somali fighters were present around Aksum.
“The Special Rapporteur also received information and reports that Somali soldiers were moved from military training camps in Eritrea to the front line in Tigray, where they accompanied Eritrean troops as they crossed the Ethiopian border,” the report read in part.
The UN report support to various allegations that President Mohamed Farmaajo has okayed the deployment of the troops to Eritrea.
“The conflict in Tigray has deepened ethnic tensions and created an immense humanitarian crisis, with 4.5 million people – most of Tigray’s population – in urgent need of assistance, the rapporteur said.
The report comes barely four months after teary-eyed parents accused Somali government of deploying soldiers in Tigray region to take part in the Tigray conflict.
The allegations by the parents were supported by Abdisalam Guled, former deputy spy chief in Somalia who claimed that several hundreds of Somali soldiers had been killed in the ongoing battle in Ethiopia’s Tigray region.
He called for an independent investigation into the alleged participation and killing of Somali trainee soldiers in the Tigray battle.
Somali government had distanced itself from the accusations, saying Ethiopia did not request troops or assistance for Somalia.
Eritrea blames the US for ‘destablisation’ in Ethiopia’s Tigray “. SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES
Eritrea’s foreign minister has blamed US administrations that supported the Tigray People’s Liberation Movement (TPLF) for the last 20 years for the current conflict in northern Ethiopia’s Tigray region, adding that blaming Eritrea for the fighting was unfounded.
In a letter to the UN Security Council circulated on Monday, Osman Saleh accused President Joe Biden’s administration of “stoking further conflict and destabilisation” through interference and intimidation in the region, apparently to “resuscitate the remnants of the TPLF regime”.
Thousands are estimated to have been killed in the war that has sent a third of the region’s six million people fleeing.
On Friday, the UN warned that famine was imminent in Tigray and Ethiopia’s north, saying there was a risk that hundreds of thousands of people would die.
Mark Lowcock, the UN humanitarian chief, said in a statement that the economy has been destroyed along with businesses, crops and farms and there are no banking or telecommunications services.
Eritrean troops
Eritrean forces were also accused of carrying out atrocities with the Ethiopian troops in Tigray.
Saleh’s letter makes no mention of Eritrean troops in Tigray, despite international calls for them to withdraw.
