Cutting through the information blackout in Ethiopia
“It is really scary. It is really difficult. I don’t think Tigray has ever been in such a trying time,” a desperate-sounding resident of Mekelle shouted down the line.
The BBC has spent days trying to speak to people in the city, which is home to half a million people. The phone lines have been down, and power shortages have meant that establishing a satellite internet connection has been hard.
But we managed to have brief conversations with two people in the city on Wednesday and Thursday evening, who gave their perspective on what has been happening.
We agreed to keep them anonymous for their own safety.
They have been experiencing a lack of basic services since the conflict started on 4 November.
And the two residents said that things have not changed since Ethiopian federal troops entered Mekelle a week ago.
“There is still no electricity, no water and no banking services,” one of our contacts said.
“There is no government in the city.”
He added that federal soldiers can only be seen in a limited area and in the absence of local police and security forces, looting has become common.
Meanwhile, government-affiliated media has reported that the city is “returning back to normal”.
Pictures of the streets of Mekelle
IMAGE COPYRIGHTETV
image captionEthiopian TV has broadcast pictures from Mekelle saying that the situation there is calm
One interviewee on Ethiopian TV (ETV) said that “people are moving about, shops are opening and… we are going to church. Everything is as you can see, very peaceful.”
ETV showed pictures of people walking about the streets.
There are also differing perspectives on the impact of the assault on the city.
Last week, before the federal troops entered Mekelle, it was shelled and some residents fled to the outskirts to escape the bombardment.
‘Homes destroyed’
On Monday, Prime Minister Abiy appeared in parliament in Addis Ababa and told MPs that “not a single civilian was killed” during the operation.
However our two contacts in Mekelle told the BBC that they had seen wounded and dead civilians in the city’s hospitals after the shelling on Saturday.
One of those we spoke to provided a picture of a home destroyed by a shell in a residential area called Ayder Edaga Begie that also killed members of one family.
