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- Ethiopia’s prime minister has fired his army chief, intelligence chief, and foreign minister.
- This comes as the army continues a five-day operation in the northern region of Tigray with a new round of airstrikes..
- The prime minister is waging a military campaign, despite international calls for dialogue with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front to avoid a civil war.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed replaced his army chief, intelligence chief and foreign minister on Sunday, as the army continued a five-day offensive in the restless Tigray region with a new round of attacks. aerial.
Abiy’s office did not give reasons for the personnel changes, which occur when it is conducting a military campaign against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), a powerful ethnic faction that led the ruling coalition for decades until that Abiy took office in 2018.
Abiy’s office said in a statement that Deputy Prime Minister Demeke Mekonnen had been appointed Foreign Minister, while Deputy Army Chief Birhanu Jula was promoted to Army Chief of Staff.
Temesgen Tiruneh, who was president of the Amhara region, was appointed the new intelligence chief. Amhara regional state forces have been fighting alongside their federal counterparts in Tigray.
Countries in the region fear the fighting could spark a civil war in Africa’s second most populous nation and destabilize the Horn of Africa region.
Ethiopia’s army announced that it had “gone to war” with the Tigray region, raising fears of a protracted conflict in Africa’s second most populous nation.
– News24 (@ News24) November 8, 2020
The Tigrayans dominated Ethiopian politics for decades until Abiy reorganized the ruling coalition into a single party that the TPLF refused to join.
Tensions escalated further after Tigray held a regional election in September, against the wishes of the federal government, which called the elections illegal. On Wednesday, Abiy launched military operations in Tigray in response to what he said was an attack on federal troops.
In a televised speech on Sunday, Abiy accused the TPLF of preparing for war with the federal government since 2018 and said the group diverted development funds to buy weapons and train militias.
He did not provide any evidence, and TPLF officials were not immediately available for comment.
Humanitarian disaster
Nine million people are at risk of being displaced by the escalating conflict in Tigray, the United Nations said in a report released on Saturday, warning that the fighting was blocking food and other aid.
About 600,000 people in Tigray depend on food aid to survive, while another million receive other forms of support, all of which are on hold, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.
Clashes between federal troops and Tigrayan forces had broken out in eight locations in the region, according to the report.
The pope expressed concern about the conflict in his weekly Vatican address on Sunday.
“I am following the news from Ethiopia with concern. In asking that the temptation of armed conflict be put aside, I invite everyone to prayer and brotherly respect, dialogue and the peaceful reconciliation of discord,” Pope Francis said.
An Ethiopian military plane struck a missile and artillery site next to the airport in Tigray’s capital Mekelle on Sunday, a military source and two diplomats told Reuters.
READ | Ethiopian airstrikes in Tigray will continue, says prime minister, as risks of civil war rise
It was not immediately clear what was destroyed by the bombing.
The plane left a military base in the city of Bahir Dar, in the neighboring Amhara region, the sources said.
The army had control of several cities near the border, including Dansha and Shire, new army chief Birhanu told a state newspaper on Sunday, without saying when the army took the areas.
It was impossible to verify the report as communications systems in the Tigray region have been shut down since Wednesday.
Abiy spoke on Saturday with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, who “offered his good offices” in pursuit of a peaceful resolution to the crisis, the UN spokesman said.
The UN chief also spoke with the head of the African Union, Moussa Faki Mahamat, and the Sudanese Prime Minister, Abdalla Hamdok, in his capacity as chair of the Africa regional group IGAD, the spokesman added.
But Abiy is not listening to mediation requests, diplomats and security officials from the region told Reuters. He did not issue a statement about the call with the UN chief.
Instead, during his television address on Sunday, he called on the international community to “understand the persistent transgressions” of the “TPLF clique.”
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