A young mother says she was repeatedly raped by 23 soldiers in Ethiopia who forced nails and rocks into her vagina.
The woman, 27, was trying to get home to her two children when uniformed soldiers pulled her off a minibus heading to Adigrat, a city in the northern region of Tigray.
The troops claimed it was because the bus was overloaded, but it was the beginning of a shocking ordeal that went on for 11 days in February.
The woman said the soldiers tied her up and marched her through fields to a bush camp.
After 11 days of rapes and beatings, she said the soldiers forced nails, cotton, plastic bags and a rock into her vagina and left her alone in the bush.
Villagers found her unconscious with a broken leg and brought her to a nearby hospital.
In a special report for Reuters, doctors revealed the bloodstained stone and three-inch nails they removed from her body.
Two months later, she is still bleeding from severe internal injuries and cannot control her urine, walk without a crutch or sit up for long periods.
While in hospital, she has had no way of contacting her four-year-old son and six-year-old daughter because the soldiers took her phone.
She had left the children with her mother to search for food but never returned. At the time, the family had less than a week’s worth of bread.
‘I don’t know anything, if they are dead or alive,’ she said. ‘The enemy destroyed my life.’
The mother is among hundreds of victims reporting horrific sexual violence by Ethiopian and allied Eritrean soldiers after fighting broke out in the northern mountainous region in November.
Some women were held captive for extended periods, days or weeks at a time, said Dr Fasika Amdeselassie, a top public health official in Tigray.
‘Women are being kept in sexual slavery,’ Fasika said. ‘The perpetrators have to be investigated.’
Reports of rape have been circulating for months, but Fasika’s comments mark the first time an Ethiopian official has made an accusation of sexual slavery in connection with the conflict.
The health official said at least 829 cases of sexual assault have been reported at the five public hospitals since the conflict began.
Eight other doctors at the hospitals said most of the rape victims described their attackers as either Ethiopian government soldiers or Eritrean troops.
It was more common for women to report sexual violence by Eritrean soldiers, the doctors said.
The Eritreans have been helping Ethiopia’s central government fight the region’s former ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), in the conflict plaguing the Horn of Africa nation.
Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed acknowledged in a speech to parliament on March 23 that ‘atrocities were being committed by raping women’ and promised the perpetrators would be punished.
Neither the Ethiopian nor the Eritrean governments responded to questions about specific cases raised by women and their doctors, or about the accusation of sexual slavery.
No charges have been announced by civilian or military prosecutors against any soldiers.
However, officials in both countries emphasized their governments have zero tolerance for sexual violence.
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