Three people including aid worker killed in air strike in Ethiopia's Shire, IRC says

The International Rescue Committee, IRC reported on Saturday that a humanitarian worker was one of three civilians killed following an airstrike on the town of Shire in northern Tigray, Ethiopia.

 

The aid worker, who was a member of IRC's health and nutrition team, passed away on Friday as a result of wounds he received while providing help to women and children, IRC said in a statement.

 

According to the statement, two further civilians were killed and three were injured in the attack, which also injured another IRC employee.

 

The attack happened in an area where the Ethiopian government and its Eritrean allies have been fighting Tigray forces intermittently for the past two years.

 

Requests for comment by Reuters regarding the event on Friday were not immediately answered by Legesse Tulu, Colonel Getnet Adane, the military spokesperson, or Billene Seyoum, the prime minister's spokesperson.

 

Yemane Gebremeskel, the information minister for Eritrea, and Getachew Reda, a spokesman for the Tigray military, both declined calls for comment right away.

 

Aid workers say scores of people have been killed in air strikes in Tigray since fighting resumed in August following a five-month ceasefire, including one on Oct. 5 that killed more than 50 when it hit a school sheltering displaced people.

 

Several airstrikes have been reported in Tigray since fighting resumed in August after a months-long lull in the fighting. Humanitarian aid to the long-blockaded region of more than 5 million people has again been cut off.

 

Around 470,000 people have been displaced in the fighting, according to an internal UN bulletin dated Oct. 10.