Thread by @MapEthiopia

Very disturbing report that contains gruesome details of sexual violence and death

telegraph.co.uk/global-health/…

Dozens are seeking abortions, medical care and psychological support in overwhelmed hospitals, many of which have been destroyed.....Thousands more are thought to be suffering in silence as they fear reprisals by security forces and rejection from their families

One video, which was widely circulated on social media and has been verified by the Telegraph, shows a surgeon in Adigrat hospital removing long nails and pieces of plastic from the vagina of one woman after she was raped and tortured.

Melat*, 20, was at home in Wukro with her elder brother Danayi* when Ethiopian federal soldiers came in, she said. “When five Ethiopian soldiers came to our house to rape me, Danayi tried to defend me from them. ‘I cannot let you rape my sister,’ he said to them.

The soldiers shot my brother in the head and took turns raping me” Melat recalled still in shock. “They raped me beside the corpse of my brother”

Like many Tigrayan women, she is now pregnant from the attack. Many others have contracted HIV or other sexually transmitted diseases

Selam, a 26-year-old coffee seller in Edaga Hamus, 100km away from Tigray’s capital of Mekelle, said she was abducted by Eritrean soldiers with 17 other women in January.

“They took us into the forest. When we arrived there, there were around 100 soldiers who were waiting for us. They tied the hands and feet of each one of us. And then they raped us without mercy,”

“We stayed that way for three days. After three days the soldiers killed five girls who had been tied with us. They poured [alcohol] over our wounds. They danced standing over us.”

By the time she was taken into the forest, she had already been raped several times by men she recognised as Eritrean soldiers. After the first attack, her abusers were waiting for her as she returned to her house from the hospital with contraceptives and post-exposure HIV drugs.

“Why the hell did you want this? We want you to be sick. That is what we are here for. We are here to make you HIV-positive,” Selam recalled one of the men as saying.

A doctor working in the sprawling Hamdayet refugee camp at the Sudanese border also said several women had reported being raped by Amharan soldiers who told them they planned to ethnically cleanse Tigray

“The women that have been raped say that the things that they say to them when they were raping them is that they need to change their identity –...

...to either Amharise them or at least leave their Tigrinya status... and that they've come there to cleanse them... to cleanse the blood line," Dr Tedros Tefera told CNN.

One doctor in Adigrat hospital....said 111 women had come to get abortions in the past two weeks alone after reporting being raped by soldiers. Since December, major hospitals in Tigray have recorded 512 cases of sexual abuse by soldiers most of which are gang rapes

But doctors and nurses from two Tigray hospitals who spoke to the Telegraph on condition of anonymity said the real figures could be significantly higher as a majority of the cases go unreported.

“Soldiers enter hospitals as they like. They cross wards and threaten patients, nurses and doctors. There were recently seven raped women from Zalambessa who disappeared from their beds after seeing soldiers in the hospital,” said Abraham*, a doctor in Adigrat hospital.

Rahel*, a nurse at a rehabilitation centre for survivors of sexual violence said officials from the transitional government in Tigray had threatened to shut down the centre.

“They believe it is these centres which are making the stories of sexually abused women known to the world,” she said. “They don’t want these stories out.”