Six of the 18 Spanish tourists trapped in Ethiopia due to clashes between state security forces and the Fano militias in the Amhara region have landed after 1:00 p.m. this Monday at the Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas Airport. “We are relieved,” one of them proclaimed in statements to journalists.
Another three have arrived in Valencia and the remaining nine will do so at the Barcelona-El Prat Airport, although, according to what the tourists who have arrived in Madrid have declared, they have suffered a small delay that will make them arrive later in the city of Barcelona.
This Saturday, the group of Spaniards landed in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, coming from Bahir Dar, a city controlled by the Army to which they were previously transferred from the Addis Zemen hotel where they had been trapped since August 2. .
The Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs indicated that the operation has been possible after intense negotiations between the Embassy and senior officials of the Ethiopian Government, including the Prime Minister’s Security Adviser, who have been requested to protect the group and send a military helicopter to carry out the evacuation by air after verifying that the transfer by road was unfeasible due to cuts and the presence of militiamen and criminal gangs.
The conflict in Ethiopia broke out on August 1 in the tourist city of Lalibela and spread throughout the Amhara region, making it difficult for Spanish tourists to leave due to the closure of the Gondar and Lalibela airports, and preventing safe transit through highway to the capital of the African country.
As one of these tourists pointed out, the worst “has been the uncertainty.” “Not because we felt continuous danger, but because we didn’t know what situation we were in, because we didn’t know the plans,” she said.
Of course, they have highlighted that they have been taken care of “very well”, despite the fact that they regularly saw AK-47 weapons and several militiamen. “The worst was one night in which we did not understand what was happening, they made us leave the room, be in the dark, fifteen of us got together in the same room, waiting for I don’t know what. We did not know if the military were going to enter, because they said that They were going to take control,” said one of them.
Regarding the notice from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in which they advised against traveling, one of them assured that “this is not true” because both the travel agency and the Ministry’s website said that there were problems in the north.
