Tigray crisis: ‘Unbearable stench of bodies’
One of the researchers behind this week's report by the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) into mass killings in the Tigray region has been speaking to the BBC about what she saw.
The town of Mai-Kadra witnessed a massacre earlier this month as the conflict between the federal army and those loyal to the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) escalated.
Rights groups, including Amnesty International, said that hundreds may have died, and the UN warned that the killings could constitute a war crime.
After an investigation, the EHRC, a constitutional body, said that more than 600 people had died and it accused a youth group from Tigray region of being behind the killings.
The commission says the group stabbed, bludgeoned and burned to death non-Tigrayan residents, which the TPLF denies.
The EHRC's Haimanot Ashenafi told the BBC that the “stench of decomposing bodies in the town was unbearable”.
“Seeing dead bodies on the road is depressing,” she added.
The town is now deserted and she said that the shoes of the deceased can be seen everywhere.
She said that because of the large numbers of dead, the burials were not done as they should have been.
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