Drone Strikes on Ethiopia Displacement Camp Kill at Least 15, Including Five Children

At least 15 people, including five children, were killed in a series of drone strikes on a camp for displaced civilians in Ethiopia's Amhara region, two sources involved in the rescue operation told Reuters on Friday. Addis Standard, an Ethiopian news outlet that spoke directly to camp residents, put the toll higher, at 16 civilians killed and 22 people injured.

A camp of more than 1,700 people

The strikes hit the camp known as Jari 2, near the town of Hayq in the South Wollo Zone. Reuters reported that the camp is home to more than 1,700 people who fled earlier violence. Addis Standard, which calls the site the Hayiq Jari 2 Turk camp, said it hosts more than 1,800 displaced people, many of them families who left parts of the Oromia region. The camp's residents were already short of food, medicine and health care before the strikes.

Struck again and again

A witness told Addis Standard that the camp was struck at least five times from about 11:00 in the morning, with roughly 15 minutes between attacks, while people were inside their shelters. "The drone struck the camp five times, at least, at intervals of 15 minutes, while IDPs were inside their shelters. We never expected a drone to attack the camp," the witness said. A community representative involved in the burials gave Reuters the same picture of repeated explosions: "There were around five explosions. Then we started collecting bodies."

Addis Standard reported that the dead included three pregnant women, an eight year old girl and students. More than 20 household shelters caught fire during the attack. The representative told Reuters that rescuers helped bury 13 people at the camp and that two of the injured later died at a hospital in Hayk, about 17 kilometres away. A camp resident told Addis Standard that at least 15 victims were buried together in one grave because there was no room to bury them one by one.

The injured and the survivors

A local official told Reuters that authorities were helping to arrange medical treatment for 36 injured people. Addis Standard reported 22 injured, taken to Hayiq Hospital, with the most serious cases sent on to Dessie Hospital. A relative of one victim told Reuters that at least 10 injured children under the age of five were receiving treatment. Survivors from the camp are now sheltering in a school in Hayk, a resident helping them told Reuters.

No claim and no explanation

Reuters reported that it was not clear why the camp was targeted or who carried out the strikes. A spokesperson for Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed did not immediately respond to a request for comment. All three of Reuters' sources said there had been no fighting in the area when the strikes happened, although members of the Amhara Fano National Movement, part of a rebel alliance led by fighters from Tigray, had been nearby. A man who lost a family member said a drone circled overhead on Wednesday and returned on Thursday before the camp was hit.

The strikes come during renewed fighting in northern Ethiopia. Government troops have pushed back a rebel alliance offensive launched on September 23. In a separate incident reported by Addis Standard on Friday, a drone strike in Rama town in Central Tigray killed at least 12 civilians who had gathered to collect grain scattered from a truck that was hit the evening before.