Displaced persons camp hit in bombing raid

Five people were killed in an Ethiopian bombing raid at a displaced people’s camp at Lailai Deder in Eritrea, eye witnesses told IRIN today (Tuesday). An international journalist who was at the scene earlier today told IRIN that the raids started at 4.50 a.m., and were followed by another attack by Ethiopian aircraft at about 9 a.m.. Local people told journalists the displaced persons, living in tents with some support from humanitarian agencies, had been deported last June from northern Ethiopia. Lailai Deda is about 40 km from the front line.

Both sides in the ongoing Ethiopia-Eritrea border war have hundreds of thousands of people already displaced or recently repatriated thanks to the conflict. Humanitarian agencies acknowledge that further displacement will happen if the conflict spreads to a wider area. A notional 40 km strip either side of the border is home to about one million people.