Villagers get medical, veterinary support from US forces

US armed forces at a military camp where Ethiopian troops have been undergoing counter-terrorism training are providing the local community with medical support, according to US sources. Medical staff had treated almost 3,000 patients over a period of three days in what the US medical staff described as their largest-ever civilian medical operation in the Horn of Africa. The US military personnel who participated in the operation are based at Hurso training camp, northwest of Dire Dawa in eastern Ethiopia. They treated patients with illnesses ranging from tuberculosis to malaria, some cases so severe that the patients could not be cured. Maj Jean Fleurantin, the officer-in-charge of the team, said they had been overwhelmed by the numbers of patients goming to them for treatment. "Even seeing close to 3,000, we still had to turn down about 500 people each day," he said. "The last day when we closed the gates, we had a lot of people still waiting outside that we just didn't have the ability to see." The US Embassy in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, announced on Thursday that US military veterinary staff had also been helping farmers and villagers in the Hurso area. "These projects are a continuation of humanitarian assistance provided by the US military to Ethiopia," it said. The troops are part of the US Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF) based in Djibouti to spearhead the US war on terrorism in the region. The CJTF's area of operations covers Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti and Yemen. It has worked conjointly with Djiboutian, Kenyan and Yemeni forces on a variety of tactics and anti-terrorist techniques. The CJTF has spent the last three months training the 12th Division of the Ethiopian army as part of its support for the country’s bid to set up the first of three new anti-terrorism battalions.