Antony Blinken, US Secretary of State pressed for an investigation in Ethiopia’s Tigray region as violence increases in the region. 

Calling it an “ethnic cleansing”, Blinken has pressed for Eritrean troops to exit from the region. 

He said while pushing for security forces, “that will not abuse the human rights of the people of Tigray or commit acts of ethnic cleansing which we’ve seen in western Tigray.”

Also Read: Ethiopia’s Tigray conflict revives bitter disputes over land

Responding to a question asked at the House Foreign Affairs Committee, he said, “That has to stop. We also need full accountability.”

“We need to get an independent investigation into what took place there, and we need some kind of process, a reconciliation process so that the country can move forward politically,” reported AFP. 

Eritrea has denied a military presence but several reports have accused it of mass killings in the northern Ethiopian region. An AFP journalist recently visited village Dengolat and interviewed its residents on the massacre. They described the troops speaking an Eritrean dialect of the Tigrinya language and wearing military uniforms. 

Also Read: Children, elderly among 207 killed in Ethiopia in recent attack: Rights Commission

Nobel Peace Prize winner and Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed had launched a military campaign in November after blaming the region’s ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, for attacks on army camps.

Blinken said, “I very much understand the concerns, for example, that the prime minister had about the TPLF and its actions, but the situation in Tigray today is unacceptable and has to change. We have, as you know, forces from Eritrea over there, and we have forces from an adjoining region, Amhara, that are there. They need to come out.”