MSF denounces widespread attacks on Tigray clinics
- The group said it had visited 106 sites between mid-December and early March, and that around 70 percent had been looted.
ADDIS ABABA: The medical charity MSF on Monday condemned a "deliberate and generalised" programme of targeting clinics in the conflict-hit Tigray region of Ethiopia.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed launched a military campaign in Tigray last year after blaming the region's ruling party, the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), for attacks on army camps.
Abiy, winner of the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize, declared victory when federal forces entered the regional capital Mekele in late November, though TPLF leaders remain on the run and fighting continues.
A statement issued Monday by Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF, said "treatment structures in the Ethiopian region of Tigray were looted, vandalised and destroyed in a deliberate and generalised manner" according to its observers in the area.
The group said it had visited 106 sites between mid-December and early March, and that around 70 percent had been looted.
Only 13 percent "functioned normally", the statement added.
At the hospital in the town of Adwa, in central Tigray, medical equipment including ultrasound machines "had been deliberately smashed," MSF said.
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