“Thousands of people” fleeing from advancing Ethiopian troops

Thousands of people in southern Eritrea were fleeing advancing Ethiopian troops on Sunday, cramming into government trucks to escape. An IRIN reporter in Debarwa, 40 km south of Asmara, said some 20,000 people, many of whom had been on the move by foot or by truck for the past seven days, were packed into an elementary school. They lay on sacks on the concrete floors of classrooms or clustered in the limited shade of small trees or the eaves of buildings. WFP spokesperson Lindsey Davies said officials in the town were on Sunday expecting a further 6,000 people over the next few days and that the government had sent out trucks to bring them in. “I saw five lorries come in. Each one had about 250 women and children in it,” Davies said. Some of the displaced were being housed with families in the town. Few of the new arrivals had food, containers for water or cooking utensils. There were no latrines, nor proper food. The government relief agency (ERREC) was distributing DMK, a high protein powder. Davies said that although there were no visible signs of malnutrition, the people were in urgent need of shelter, food and medicines.

Ethiopia, for its part, accused the Eritrean authorities of exaggerating the number of displaced. A report on 25 May by the Ethiopian news agency (ENA) quoted various foreign media as casting doubts on Asmara’s estimate of between 500,000 and one million people being displaced by the fighting. Given Eritrea’s total population of 3.5 million, this was very unlikely, it said.