The United Nations refugee agency voiced deep concern on Friday at reports of soldiers taking hundreds of people away from displacement camps in Tigray, Ethiopia earlier this week, saying such sites should be a safe haven.
Three aid workers and a doctor told Reuters this week that
Eritrean and Ethiopian soldiers forcibly detained more than 500 young men and women from four camps for displaced people in the town of Shire in the northern region of Tigray on Monday night.
"We reiterate our call on all parties to ensure the protection of civilians including the forcibly displaced.
It is crucial that all parties to the conflict recognise the civilian and humanitarian character of the displacement sites," Babar Baloch, spokesman of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told a Geneva news briefing.
Some had been released, he said, providing no figure.
(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay and Emma Farge)
