Press Release

ANU Press Release

The Agaezi National Union (ANU) Party strongly condemns the deadly airstrike in Mekelle, the capital city of the Tigray Region, Ethiopia, carried out by the joint mission of Eritrean and Ethiopian forces.

It is always forbidden to direct attacks against civilians; indeed, intentionally targeting civilians while aware of their civilian status is a war crime. The Agaezi National Union (ANU) Party strongly condemns the deadly airstrike in Mekelle, the capital city of the Tigray Region, Ethiopia, conducted by the joint mission of Eritrean and Ethiopian forces. This air raid hit a kindergarten in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, killing at least ten people, including several children, and injuring others. Dr. Kibrom Gebreselassie, chief executive of Ayder Hospital, stated that the bombing struck a children’s playground at Res Kids Paradise. The Ethiopian Government’s Communication Service (PP) stated in a statement that the government would “take action targeting the military forces that are the source of the anti-peace sentiment of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front.” However, ANU has conducted the necessary investigations and has confirmed that the Prosperity Party government is accountable for such barbaric and horrific airstrikes against innocent civilians, in collaboration with Eritrea’s terrorist one-man dictatorship.

This is clearly part of the repeated war crimes, as it constitutes a violation of the laws of war, which give rise to individual criminal responsibility for actions by combatants, such as intentionally killing civilians or prisoners of war, torture, taking hostages, unnecessarily destroying civilian property, deception by perfidy, wartime sexual violence, pillaging, and any individual who is part of the command structure that orders mass killings, including genocide or ethnic cleansing. This includes granting no quarter despite surrender, conscripting children in the military, and violating the legal distinctions of proportionality and military necessity.

This brutal and barbaric airstrike violates the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, which was first adopted in 1949 and is based on parts of the 1907 Hague Convention IV. Therefore, we, the Agaezi National Union Party, urge the international community, state and non-state actors, and human rights defenders to join us in condemning such barbaric and brutal airstrikes targeting innocent civilians, and in holding the Ethiopian Prosperity Party (PP) and the Eritrean regime accountable for their actions.

Agaezi National Union (ANU) Party
26.08.2022