Government officials maintain that civilians are not being targeted by their offensive in Amhara, which they say is linked to the country’s 11-month war that initially pitted forces loyal to the TPLF (Tigray People’s Liberation Front) – the governing party of nearby Tigray region – against the national armies of Ethiopia and neighbouring Eritrea. “They’re trying to finish us off.”Īmare is among a growing number of Qemant to level such accusations against Ethiopian troops and allied militias affiliated with the country’s Amhara regional government. “They want to cleanse the Amhara region of the Qemant,” he added. I’m lucky to be alive,” he said in a phone interview from the camp. “They shot at anyone who moved, including the elderly. The 20-year-old student, a member of Ethiopia’s Qemant minority ethnic group, fled to the camp to escape what he says was a raid by Ethiopian soldiers on Shinfa, a town in Ethiopia’s Amhara region some 10km (six miles) from the Sudanese border, on June 13. “It was either leave home or be killed,” he told Al Jazeera from the safety of a United Nations-run refugee camp in the Basinga village in Sudan’s Gadarif state bordering Ethiopia.
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