1935 Italian bombing of a hospital in Dolo, Ethiopia
On 30 December 1935, a Swedish Red Cross field hospital was destroyed in an airstrike by the "Regia Aeronautica" (Royal Italian Air Force) in Dolo, Ethiopia, killing between 22 and 30 people, mostly Ethiopians. The attack was part of an Italian response to the killing of Italian aviator Tito Minniti by either Ethiopian troops or civilians.
Background.
Following the outbreak of the Second Italo-Ethiopian War in 1935, the Swedish Red Cross mobilized a field hospital to send to Ethiopia under the supervision of physician Fride Hylander. Hylander and his deputy, Gunnar Agge, both had extensive experience working in Ethiopia, the latter having previously served as a staff physician seconded to the Imperial Ethiopian Army. The Red Cross' plans for the hospital was that it would be stationed in Harrar, away from the fighting, however, the Ethiopian government directed it be split into two and both elements moved to the front lines, an order to which the Swedish officials acquiesced. By 19 December, the larger of the two hospitals was in place and fully operational near Dolo.
On 26 December, Italian pilots Tito Minniti and Livio Zannoni were brought down near Dolo while flying a mission, whereupon they were confronted and killed soon afterwards by Ethiopians. Minniti was castrated and beheaded, being killed by either by Ethiopian forces (according to the Italians) or by local civilians (according to the Ethiopians). According to Rainer Baudendistel, "it was never established whether they died defending themselves or were killed after surrender". The deaths of the two Italian aviators was used by Rodolfo Graziani as a pretext to order an airstrike on the hospital.
Bombing.
On 30 December 1935, four days following the death of Minniti, the Italian Air Force dropped approximately 100 bombs full of mustard gas on the Swedish hospital at Dolo, destroying all medical equipment, killing two Swedish staff members as well as numerous Ethiopians, and injuring Hylander. The number of dead Ethiopians varied between sources and ranged from 18 to 28. The initial official announcement by the Red Cross claimed a casualty figure of nine Swedes and twenty three Ethiopians. Following the airstrike, Italian aircraft made a second pass over the site, dropping leaflets lettered in Amharic, signed by Graziani, which read:
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According to later claims by Swedish officials, at the time of the attack, the Swedish hospital was positioned at a distance of from an Ethiopian headquarters and was guarded by a five-man Ethiopian Army contingent. However, Swedish officials claimed, the escort troops did not enter the grounds of the hospital except for "some visits by its head". A Red Cross representative, the Swiss physician Marcel Junod, also asserted that there was "no doubt that the bombing was deliberate."
Reactions.
"Ras" Desta Damtew, who had escaped unharmed from the airstrike, immediately communicated the attack to the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie. Within hours, the bombing of the field hospital became international news, causing indignant reactions that worried Benito Mussolini. He ordered Graziani to avoid other actions of this kind in the future, even if, in reality, more or less voluntary attacks against Red Cross units continued for at least a month.
As soon as the news reached Sweden, Prince Carl, Duke of Västergötland and president of the Swedish Red Cross, protested this, while King Gustaf V rushed back to his country house to chair an emergency meeting, saying he was deeply shocked. Swedish radio stations cancelled all programmes for New Year's Eve celebrations as a sign of mourning. Police rushed to surround the Italian embassy to protect it from the angry mob chanting "Down with Mussolini!"; the Italian ambassador to Stockholm, Marchese Gaetano Paternò di Manchi di Bilici, shouted from behind the police barricade that Swedish medical personnel stationed in Ethiopia "cannot expect to be as safe as if they were walking the streets of Stockholm." An editorial by the pro-fascist "Il Giornale d'Italia" was similarly dismissive, asking if Italy "should order her soldiers to put corks on the points of their bayonets and her aviators to fill their bombs with cologne water".
Fascist officials, on the other hand, were more cautious. Several days following the attack, Italy expressed its official regret to Sweden for the bombing of the Swedish Red Cross hospital, but warned against narrating tendentious versions of the incident. The bombing was asserted to be a reprisal against the "atrocity committed by the Ethiopians". The Italian press was ordered to make no further reference to the hospital bombing, but to celebrate Tito Minniti, whose beheading would have triggered the reprisal. In Reggio Calabria, Minniti's birthplace, flags were at half-mast and houses were draped in black, a sentiment later echoed throughout Italy. France and the Netherlands compared the Italian airstrike to the Imperial German sinking of the "RMS" Lusitania in 1915.
Aftermath.
Following the bombing, surviving Swedish Red Cross staff fled to Addis Ababa and were subsequently withdrawn from the country. The remains of the deceased Swedish staff were repatriated to Sweden in an aircraft piloted by the Count von Rosen. About a week after the attack, a similar airstrike was made against a Canadian Red Cross field hospital. Other hospitals were also targeted in the war. In the 90th session of the League of Nations the Swedish and Ethiopian delegates protested against the Italian air raids targeting Red Cross hospitals and asked for their immunity. The Red Cross also recommended that all its hospital personnel withdraw from Ethiopia unless Italy promised to not strike them.
Due to the fact that – at the time of the attack – Sweden did not have diplomatic relations with Ethiopia, the United Kingdom undertook an investigation into the airstrike on its behalf. On 15 January 1936, the Swedish government filed a formal protest with the Kingdom of Italy.
Legacy.
A memorial in Glommersträsk, Sweden commemorates Gunnar Lundström, one of Sweden's two fatalities in the attack. The airport in Reggio Calabria, meanwhile, is officially named Reggio Calabria Tito Minniti Airport in honor of the Italian aviator.
References.
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