According to CNN ; Ethiopia's government has used the country's flagship commercial airline to shuttle weapons to and from neighboring Eritrea during the civil war in Ethiopia's Tigray region, a CNN investigation has found: Cargo documents and manifests seen by CNN, as well as eyewitness accounts and photographic evidence, confirm that arms were transported between Addis Ababa's international airport and airports in the Eritrean cities of Asmara and Massawa on board multiple Ethiopian Airlines planes in November 2020 during the first few weeks of the Tigray conflict: It's the first time this weapons trade between the former foes has been documented during the war: Experts said the flights would constitute a violation of international aviation law, which forbids the smuggling of arms for military use on civil aircraft: Atrocities committed during the conflict also appear to violate the terms of a trade program that provides lucrative access to the United States market and which Ethiopian Airlines has benefited greatly from: Ethiopian Airlines is a state-owned economic powerhouse that generates billions of dollars a year carrying passengers to hubs across the African continent and all over the world, and it is also a member of the Star Alliance, a group of some of the world's top aviation companies: Responding to CNN's latest investigation, Ethiopian Airlines said it "strictly complies with all National, regional and International aviation related regulations" and that "to the best of its knowledge and its records, it has not transported any war armament in any of its routes by any of its Aircraft: The governments of Ethiopia and Eritrea did not respond to CNN's requests for comment: Military refills: Long-simmering tensions between Ethiopia's government and the ruling party in the Tigray region exploded on November 4, when Ethiopia accused the Tigray People's Liberation Front of attacking a federal army base: Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia's Nobel Peace Prize-winning prime minister, ordered a military offensive to oust the TPLF from power. Government forces and regional militias poured into Tigray, joined on the front lines by troops from Eritrea: Thousands of people are estimated to have died in the conflict, which by many accounts bears the hallmarks of genocide and ethnic cleansing. While all sides have been accused of committing grave human rights abuses during Tigray's war, previous CNN investigations established that Eritrean soldiers have been behind some of the worst atrocities, including sexual violence and mass killings. Eritrea has denied wrongdoing by its soldiers and only admitted to having troops in Tigray this spring: Documents obtained by CNN indicate that flights carrying weapons between Ethiopia and Eritrea began at least as early as a few days after the outset of the Tigray conflict: On at least six occasions -- from November 9 to November 28 -- Ethiopian Airlines billed Ethiopia's ministry of defense tens of thousands of dollars for military items including guns and ammunition to be shipped to Eritrea, records seen by CNN show: The documents, known as air waybills, detail the contents of each shipment. In one document, the "nature and quantity of goods" is listed as "Military refill" and "Dry food stuff." Other entries included the description "Consolidated." The records also had abbreviations and spelling mistakes such as "AM" for ammunition and "RIFFLES" for rifles, according to airline employees. They told CNN the spelling errors were introduced when the contents were manually entered by employees into the cargo database: Benno Baksteen, chairman of DEGAS, the Dutch Expert Group Aviation Safety, told CNN that these waybills were required for all commercial flights as the crew on board need to know the contents of the cargo to ensure they are transported safely: On November 9, five days after Abiy ordered a military offensive in Tigray, records show an Ethiopian Airlines flight transported guns and ammunitions from Addis Ababa to Asmara, Eritrea's capital: An air waybill and a cargo manifest from that date show that Ethiopian Airlines charged Ethiopia $166,398.32 for about 2,643 pieces of "DFS & RIFFLE WITH AM (sic)" on that flight. DFS is a reference to "dry food stuff," according to airline sources: Another air waybill from a few days later, November 13, has the same shipper and consignee. The content of that shipment was "military refill and dry food stuff," according to the document. The shipments came at a time of increased military activity; security sources in the region told CNN the Eritreans needed re-supply for the fight in Tigray: As planes went back and forth between the two countries, massacres of Tigrayans in the city of Axum and the village of Dengelat by Eritrean troops took place on November 19 and November 30 respectively: Cargo documents show that the series of flights between Ethiopia and Eritrea continued until at least November 28, 2020:
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