Long-cut phones ring again in Ethiopia’s Tigray, bring grief

For a year and a half, phone calls to people trying to survive one of the world’s worst wars didn’t go through. Now, as phone lines start to be restored to parts of Ethiopia’s Tigray region after a fragile peace deal, some Tigrayans are relieved while others grieve.

“I have been dreading receiving phone calls,” said a Tigrayan living in Norway, who like others spoke with The Associated Press on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals against his relatives. “You want to speak to your family, but you don’t know what kind of stories you will hear, in terms of who is still alive.”

The conflict between Ethiopian and allied forces against the Tigray side is estimated to have killed hundreds of thousands of people since late 2020, according to the United Nations and the United States, citing academic research. The U.N. secretary-general has said more people have died in this conflict than in Ukraine’s.

Only now are many Tigrayans starting to learn the fate of loved ones as phone lines are reconnected in some areas that have returned to the control of Ethiopia’s federal government.

On Dec. 10, the Tigrayan in Norway spoke with his father and siblings in the central town of Adwa for the first time since June 2021.