The Erigavo Killings
Erigavo, Sanaag region · 1988–1989 · hundreds killed despite no SNM attack reaching the city until 1989
Like Berbera, already documented elsewhere in this archive, Erigavo is a case where the absence of any actual SNM attack makes the government's violence against civilians harder to explain as counterinsurgency and easier to recognize for what it was.
A city the SNM never reached
The Somali army's campaign in Erigavo began soon after fighting broke out in Burao and Hargeisa in May 1988 — but SNM forces themselves did not reach that part of the country until 1989. In the meantime, hundreds of civilians were killed by government forces and government-armed Ogadeni refugee militias operating in the area, entirely independent of any actual combat.
The 1989 killings
Following a brief SNM occupation of the town in 1989, 60 Isaaq elders who had been unable to escape the city because of the surrounding mountainous terrain were taken from their homes by government forces and shot by firing squad against a wall of the public relations office.
Confirmed by exhumation
A number of large mass graves were discovered in Erigavo in 2012, part of the same broader forensic effort referenced on the Accountability Pathways page, where the Somaliland War Crimes Investigation Commission's count of 226 known mass grave sites nationwide includes one specifically recorded at Sheikh and several more in the wider Sanaag region.
Sources
- Wikipedia — "Somaliland War of Independence" (Erigavo section) Documents the killing of 60 Isaaq elders by firing squad in Erigavo in 1989, and the discovery of large mass graves there in 2012. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somaliland_War_of_Independence