Three employees of Medecines Sans Frontieres (MSF), also known as Medicine Without Borders have been killed in Ethiopia’s troubled northern region, Tigray.
According to a statement by the medical charity organisation on Friday, three members of staff were travelling in Tigray on Thursday when they lost contact with them. Worried as to their safety, they went on a search and found their vehicle empty the next day, with their lifeless bodies lying metres away.
The three staff were María Hernández, MSF’s emergency coordinator, Yohannes Halefom Reda, the organisation’s assistant coordinator, and Tedros Gebremariam Gebremichael, a Tigrayan driver.
MSF in the statement expressed their disgust and pain at the attack and called for the protection of aid givers in the country.
The organisation says “no words can truly convey all our sadness, shock, and outrage over this horrific attack, nor can they soothe the loss and suffering of their families and loved ones, to whom we relay our deepest sympathy and condolences,”
“We condemn this attack on our colleagues in the strongest possible terms and will be relentless in learning what happened. Maria, Yohannes, and Tedros were in Tigray providing assistance to people, and it is unthinkable that they paid for this work with their lives. We are in close contact with their families and ask for the utmost respect and privacy for them at this incredibly difficult time.”
The perpetrators of the act are yet to be identified but it is a devastating blow to the confidence of aid givers in Africa. The profiles of the three victims of the latest attack on MSF are; Hernández, 35, from Madrid, started her MSF work in 2015 in Central African Republic and worked in Yemen, Mexico and Nigeria.
The other two staff, Reda and Gebremichael, 31 and 35 respectively were Ethiopians working with Doctors Without Borders and they joined the organisation February and May respectively.
