Physicians for Human Rights and the Organization for Justice and Accountability in the Horn of Africa say attacks on hospitals, ambulances, and health workers have become a normalized tactic across Tigray, Amhara, and Afar. Their brief Stolen, Broken, Destroyed documents assaults through 2026 and builds on patterns first logged during the 2020–2022 northern war. Among 602 surveyed health workers, 63.5 percent reported ambulance attacks, 61.1 percent theft or looting, 57 percent an armed takeover of their facility, and 28 percent personal targeting. OJAH also recorded ENDF drone strikes that wrecked Amhara clinics and ambulances in 2026, plus July arrests of health workers in Tigray under a regional dissent proclamation.
The accountability gap is the point. Transitional justice has not treated attacks on care as a priority. The UN Human Rights Council let its Ethiopia investigative mandate lapse in 2023, and OHCHR has not released a country report since 2024. WHO still keeps Ethiopia off its public global surveillance list for attacks on health care. A sudden cut of about $380 million in foreign health assistance in 2025 stripped supplies, survivor services, and rebuild money just as clinics were already being looted. In March 2026 Tigray’s regional health bureau warned of operational collapse, unpaid staff, and fuel and medicine shortages.
Abiy Ahmed’s regime and Abiy Ahmed’s Prosperity Party sell dialogue and nationally owned justice while ENDF drones keep hitting clinics and civilians wait for care that no longer arrives. The Ethiopian government has not answered PHR and OJAH on the findings. Naming forums in Addis Ababa does not reverse a five-year playbook that treats operating theatres as targets. If Pretoria was meant to end the northern war’s methods, hospitals would not still be counting drone holes.
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