A frail truce The battle for Tigray is not over

Despite a peace deal last year, Eritrean troops remain in border areas, and the Irob community pays the price

- Guardian reporter

For months, Father Tesfaye* has taken his battered Land Cruiser and shuttled secretly between his home district of Irob and Mekelle, the capital of Ethiopia's northern Tigray region, ferrying sick people, medicines and small amounts of desperately needed food. Eritrean troops block the one good road into Irob, preventing aid agencies from bringing in humanitarian supplies, so the Roman Catholic priest must take a treacherous route through the mountains to avoid checkpoints.

The Irob are a small community of about 35,000 people who speak their own language - Saho - and mostly live in the north-eastern pocket of Tigray to which they give their name. It is a remote border area that has long been claimed by Eritrea.

When war broke out in Tigray in November 2020, Eritrea's military swept into the region as an ally of Ethiopia's federal government against the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), which once dominated Ethiopian politics.

Eritrean troops waged a campaign of gang-rape, sexual slavery, enforced starvation, torture and mass killings against civilians, including a 2021 massacre of about 50 people in Irob on Ethiopia's Christmas Day, 7 January.