- Amazon drought leaves Colombian border town high and dry
- Some Cubans depend on sugar water as food shortages bite
- Saudi crown prince says no Israel ties without Palestinian state
- Canada to further cut international student, foreign worker permits
- YouTube launches new TV-focused tools for creators
- White Sox heading for worst season in MLB history
- China the top challenge in US history: senior diplomat
- Hong Kong democracy tycoon's son warns time running out
- New migraine drugs no better than cheap painkillers: big study
- Sean 'Diddy' Combs again denied bail in sex trafficking case
- Brewers clinch division title as MLB playoff race heats up
- Man City blunted by 'giant' Inter in Champions League stalemate
- US stocks dip despite larger Fed interest rate cut
- Man City held by Inter as PSG pinch win in Champions League
- All Blacks recall Beauden Barrett for Australia Test
- Fears of all-out war as new Lebanon device blasts kill 20, wound 450
- Spurs late show saves Postecoglou blushes at Coventry
- PSG snatch late goal to beat Champions League debutants Girona
- Gittens' late double gives Dortmund Champions League win at Brugge
- Man City blunted by Inter in Champions League stalemate
- Hidden talent: French Olympic star Marchand opts for disguise
- MrBeast named in California lawsuit over 'Beast Games' show
- Gauff splits with Gilbert as coach after 14-month run
- Hundreds of thousands at risk in Sudan's El-Fasher: UN
- Harvey Weinstein pleads not guilty to new sex crime charge
- Venezuelan opposition candidate says letter conceding election was coerced
- Ukraine official claims Russian advance in Kursk has been 'stopped'
- X update allows app to bypass Brazil ban: internet providers
- Fears of all-out war as new Lebanon device blasts kill 14, wound 450
- US Fed makes aggressive rate cut, weeks before election
- Arsenal's Odegaard faces lengthy injury absence
- India coal expansion risks massive methane growth: report
- China the top challenge in US history, top diplomat says
- US Fed makes larger half-point cut in first reduction since 2020
- Ronaldo's Al Nassr appoint former AC Milan boss Pioli
- Ainslie 'relieved' as British book place in Louis Vuitton Cup final
- Struggling Roma replace sacked icon De Rossi with Ivan Juric
- Women's NBA will add 15th team in Portland in 2026
- Brazil fires need harsher punishment: environmental police boss
- Boeing to start large temporary furloughs amid Seattle strike
- Fears of all-out war as new Lebanon device blasts kill nine, wound 300
- 'Emergency' declared over falling UK butterfly numbers
- McIlroy outlines threats to golf peace deal
- Stock markets, dollar slip before US rate decision
- Russian advance in Kursk 'stopped': Ukraine official to AFP
- UN members demand end to 'unlawful' Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories
- Snapchat pushes 'safer' platform image, but not everyone agrees
- Three dead, 100 wounded in new wave of Lebanon device explosions
- So where does the oceans' plastic waste come from?
- Allied war heroes buried in Netherlands... 80 years on
RBGPF | 5.79% | 60.5 | $ | |
RYCEF | 1.37% | 6.55 | $ | |
VOD | 0.49% | 10.23 | $ | |
CMSC | 0.02% | 25.055 | $ | |
RELX | -0.82% | 47.37 | $ | |
GSK | -0.31% | 42.43 | $ | |
RIO | -0.02% | 62.91 | $ | |
SCS | 0.71% | 14.11 | $ | |
BTI | -0.34% | 37.88 | $ | |
AZN | 0.06% | 78.58 | $ | |
BCC | 1.33% | 137.06 | $ | |
NGG | -0.46% | 70.05 | $ | |
JRI | 0.45% | 13.44 | $ | |
CMSD | -0.12% | 24.98 | $ | |
BCE | 3.09% | 35.61 | $ | |
BP | -0.37% | 32.43 | $ |
'Afar has been raided': Suffering stalks Ethiopia's forgotten front
The shell crashed through Aicha Nur's flimsy hut just as she was serving a lunch of bread and milk to her nine-year-old son Tahir.
His slim body quickly became engulfed in flames.
She grabbed Tahir and another son before fleeing on foot to safety, dodging an artillery assault allegedly carried out by Tigrayan rebels on her village in northern Ethiopia's Afar region.
They managed to escape, but Aicha's six other children remain unaccounted for.
She worries she has lost them forever to what has quietly emerged as the most active front in Ethiopia's grinding war.
More than 15 months since the first shots rang out, foreign envoys are talking up paths to peace for Ethiopia and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed publicly refers to the conflict in the past tense.
But Afar is enduring its roughest period yet, sparked by a fresh rebel offensive that has yielded massive destruction and displacement, according to officials and residents.
Across the arid, punishingly hot region, shell-shocked survivors await food handouts at schools that have been transformed into makeshift displacement sites.
Afar's only referral hospital is stretched well beyond its bed capacity, with doctors running low on anaesthesia amid a seemingly endless influx of civilians with fractured limbs.
All the while, patients wonder aloud why no one seems to be paying attention, complaining that "their voices haven't been heard", said hospital CEO Hussein Aden.
"We've been dying for a long time now, but nobody has listened to us," Aicha told AFP as she propped Tahir up on his hospital bed, fanning away flies from his burned and blistered face.
- Outgunned -
The war erupted in Ethiopia's northernmost Tigray region in November 2020, but Afar did not see combat until July 2021 when the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) rebel group expanded its operations.
Late last year, fighting intensified in Afar before Abiy, winner of the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize, deployed to the region as part of a counter-offensive that ultimately pushed the rebels back into Tigray.
Those bouts of hostilities pale in comparison to what Afar residents say has unfolded in recent weeks: unremitting attacks involving many more Tigrayan fighters and much heavier weapons, including tanks and automated cannons.
Afar forces, armed with Kalashnikov rifles and lacking military backing, have been thoroughly outgunned.
"You can't defeat mortars with a Kalashnikov," said Ibrahim Abdala, a militia fighter who was shot in the chest in Afar's Kuneba district this month.
- 'Not even a rug to sleep on' -
Afar civilians fleeing the latest attacks describe harrowing, days-long journeys on foot towards towns that are more secure but woefully ill-equipped to feed and shelter them.
Regional government documents seen by AFP indicate 294,000 people were displaced in January, and a regional spokesman said the number is now up to 350,000 since the start of the year.
It's unclear when or even if they will be able to return home, with Afar's western border reportedly occupied by the TPLF.
"All the schools, clinics, hospitals that were constructed in this space of time are now gone on the western border. The whole lot," said Valerie Browning, an aid worker who has lived in Afar for more than three decades.
"Afar has been raided, vandalised, and there is not that much left."
Her claims could not be independently verified.
On a recent afternoon, scores of women and children sat in a sweltering dried-out riverbed, clustered under shade provided by acacia trees and sharing food handouts as boys struggled to play football using a plastic water bottle.
"You see the truth with your own eyes. We have been evicted from our homes and are eating biscuits," said Mohammad Adem Endrisi, a 32-year-old schoolteacher from Kuneba.
"There are pregnant women among us... There is not even a rug to sleep on here."
- 'Path of destruction' -
Aid workers are also worried about sky-high malnutrition rates in Tigray.
The UN says recent fighting has made it impossible for humanitarian convoys to enter Tigray via the Afar capital Semera -- currently the only functioning overland route.
The TPLF has defended its push into Afar, saying it was provoked by attacks on its positions within Tigray and claiming it "does not have a plan to remain in Afar for long."
It also points out that Tigray has been under what the UN terms a "de facto humanitarian blockade" since long before the latest clashes erupted in Afar, while maintaining that its fighters have never prevented aid trucks from passing.
But that argument does not resonate with Afar residents.
"The TPLF has chosen the path of destruction, not the path of peace," said Ahmed Nuro, a local official in the border town of Abala.
"They will never stop firing."
E.Schubert--BTB