NAIROBI — Even before the airstrikes began again, the hospital in the capital of Ethiopia’s Tigray region was barely hanging on.The electricity at Ayder Referral Hospital had been cut for weeks, hospital head Kibrom Gebreselassie said. Medical and fuel supplies were dwindling. Doctors and nurses had been working without pay for 16 months.
But an uneasy peace in Ethiopia’s civil war had meant that, at least since March, the flow of wounded had paused. Then last week, an airstrike that residents and local media blamed on the Ethiopian government ripped through a kindergarten. Gebreselassie said four people, including two children, were declared dead on arrival at the hospital. As staff at the Ayder hospital rushed to treat more than a dozen victims, he said, they were forced to forgo care for their regular cancer, kidney and cardiac patients.