Aid group MSF ‘horrified’ as its colleagues are murdered

NAIROBI, KENYA >> The medical charity Doctors Without Borders said Friday it was “horrified by the brutal murder” of three colleagues in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, the latest attack on humanitarian workers helping civilians in the deadly conflict there.

A statement by the aid group, also known by its French acronym MSF, said two Ethiopian colleagues and one from Spain were found dead Friday, a day after colleagues lost contact with them while they were traveling.

“This morning the vehicle was found empty and a few meters away, their lifeless bodies,” the statement said.

“We condemn this attack on our colleagues in the strongest possible terms and will be relentless in understanding of what happened,” MSF added, calling it “unthinkable” that the three — emergency coordinator Maria Hernandez, assistant coordinator Yohannes Halefom Reda and driver Tedros Gebremariam Gebremichael — paid for their work with their lives.

In a statement, Ethiopia’s foreign ministry expressed condolences for the deaths it said occurred in the town of Abi Addi, and it suggested that Tigray fighters were to blame. It also called for military escorts — a thorny issue for many aid groups because Ethiopian forces, like all sides in the conflict, have been accused of abuses.

Another MSF team was attacked in March after witnessing Ethiopian soldiers pulling men off two public buses and shooting them dead. Soldiers beat the MSF driver and threatened to kill him, the aid group said at the time.

This latest attack occurred amid some of the fiercest fighting in Tigray since the conflict began in November. This week Ethiopia’s military acknowledged carrying out an airstrike on a busy market in Tigray that health workers said killed several dozen civilians. The military claimed it was targeting combatants.

Ethiopian soldiers detained six victims of the airstrike en route to a hospital and three were later released, a regional health official told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.