Two of Eritrea’s 3 refugee children have been killed in a Tigray flight United Nations News

A plane crash has hit a refugee camp in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, killing three Eritreans, including two children, the United Nations said.

Wednesday’s attack on the Mai Aini refugee camp, near the southern Tigrayan town of Mai Tsebri, injured four other refugees but their lives were not in danger, the UN said in a statement on Thursday.

“I am deeply saddened to hear that three Eritrean refugees, two of them children, have been killed,” said United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi, emphasizing that refugees “should not be a target.” .

“While UNHCR continues to gather and confirm information on the incident, it reiterates UNHCR’s call for all those in the conflict to respect the rights of civilians, including refugees,” Grandi added, referring to the UN refugee agency.

There was no immediate comment from the Ethiopian government or the military. The government has already denied that it wants to fight civilians.

“I am deeply saddened to learn that three Eritrean refugees, two of them children, were killed yesterday in a plane crash at the Ain camp in northern Ethiopia.”

~ Chief Commissioner @FilippoGrandi on a tragic event yesterday https://t.co/CT4Pn3qXa3 pic.twitter.com/zgZRRvNpiF

– UNHCR, UN Refugee Agency (@Rfugees) January 6, 2022

On December 30, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said dozens of civilians had been killed south of Tigray in a plane crash a week later that it said “deadly attacks and serious injuries had taken place since October”.

The war that erupted in early November 2020 between government forces and militants north of Tigray has killed at least thousands of people, forcing millions to flee their homes and leaving behind a major humanitarian crisis.

Before the war, Ethiopia received about 150,000 refugees from neighboring Eritrea, who were fleeing poverty by an oppressive government.

In September, Human Rights Watch he said Eritrean troops – who had joined the war on the side of Abiy troops – and Tigrayan fighters raped, arrested and killed Eritrean refugees in Tigray, in an attack that turned out to be “notorious war crimes”. Much of his report focused on two camps – Shimelba and Hitsats – which were destroyed during the war, forcing many Eritrean refugees to flee to the remaining two camps at Mai Aini and Adi Harush.

‘We need 100 cars a day’

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced victory in late November after government forces seized the provincial capital, Mekelle. But the war continued, and the Tigray forces recaptured most of the Tigray by June before pushing into neighboring Amhara and Afar.

He is said to have reached a distance of about 120 miles (125 km) outside the capital, Addis Ababa, On the road, but at the end of December, he announced the return of the Tigray state troops after seizing more towns and cities, marking a turning point in the war.

The plane crash in Tigray has continued, with the region also having a message closure and what the UN has described as a blockage in aid, restricting food aid and medicine to reach the northern population of 6 million people.

No trucks had arrived in Tigray since December 14 and some who were waiting to enter the area were abducted, OCHA said in a recent report.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Thursday that as of July 12, only 1,338 vehicles could enter Tigray, “which is less than 12 percent of the vehicles we need to enter”.

“As we have been telling you many times, we need about 100 cars every day to meet the needs of the people in Tigray,” he told reporters daily.

Health care delivery has been suspended in some Tigray areas due to a lack of essential medicines, according to OCHA.

World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, also from Tigrayan, said on Thursday that the UN health agency was “not allowed to provide medical care” in Tigray from mid-July 2020.

“This is despite the fact that the WHO has repeatedly asked for assistance in the Tigray region,” he told a news conference at COVID-19.

“Even in the darkest times of the war in Syria, South Sudan, Yemen and others, WHO and its allies can save lives.

“However, the de facto Tigray blockade is a barrier to access to human resources, which are killing people.”