Three Aid Workers Were ‘Intentionally Killed’ in Tigray Region of Ethiopia, M.S.F. Says

Doctors Without Borders has accused Ethiopia’s government of failing to properly investigate the slayings of three of the group’s aid workers, releasing a new report on Tuesday that implicates Ethiopian soldiers and demands that the country’s government bring the perpetrators to justice.

The report was the latest turn in a four-year effort to seek accountability for a notorious episode of violence against international humanitarian workers. The aid workers’ bullet-riddled bodies were found on a remote roadside in the northern Tigray region of Ethiopia in June 2021, at the height of a brutal civil war.

“Our team was executed,” Raquel Ayora, a senior official with Doctors Without Borders, told reporters in Nairobi on Tuesday. “There is no way the perpetrators could not know that they were killing civilians.”

Although the report by Doctors Without Borders stopped short of explicitly naming perpetrators, it appeared to suggest that Ethiopian soldiers were responsible. That finding was broadly similar to a 2022 investigation by The New York Times that identified an Ethiopian military officer who gave orders to “finish off” the aid workers shortly before they were killed.

Doctors Without Borders, which is widely known by its French name, Médecins Sans Frontières, noted that the Ethiopian government and its forces had shown increased hostility toward international aid groups in the weeks leading up to the shootings. It also said that retreating Ethiopian troops were present on the road where the team was killed.

But the group said that despite repeated assurances from the Ethiopian government that an investigation was underway, the victims’ families still have not received “credible answers” about what happened.