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Rockets from Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region hit the capital of neighboring Eritrea on Saturday, diplomats said, the latest indication that Ethiopia’s internal conflict is spreading beyond its borders.
The attacks in Eritrea came on the same day that the ruling party in Tigray, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), called for rocket attacks on two airports in a separate region of Ethiopia.
The attacks exacerbated concerns that a conflict Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has promised will be swift and contained, could instead snowball and destabilize the broader Horn of Africa region.
Abiy, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize last year, announced on November 4 that he had ordered military operations in Tigray in a dramatic escalation of a long-standing dispute with the TPLF.
Hundreds of people were reportedly killed in the conflict in Africa’s second most populous country, some in a gruesome massacre documented by Amnesty International.
Thousands of people have fled the fighting and airstrikes in Tigray, crossing into neighboring Sudan.
The TPLF accuses the Abiy government of obtaining military support from Eritrea, something that Ethiopia denies.
The rocket attacks in Eritrea took place on Saturday night, two Addis Ababa-based diplomats told AFP.
“Reports we are receiving indicate that several of the rockets fell near the airport” in Eritrea’s capital Asmara, a diplomat said.
Early Saturday, Getachew Reda, a high-ranking member of the TPLF, threatened retaliatory “missile attacks” against Asmara and the Eritrean port city of Massawa.
It was not immediately clear how many rockets were fired, where they were fired from in Tigray, if they hit their targets or what damage they inflicted.
Radio Erena, a Paris-based diaspora station sympathetic to the Eritrean opposition, quoted Asmara residents as reporting “four explosions in all.”
Tigray has been in a communications blackout since the conflict began and calls to Asmara weren’t coming in until Saturday.
There was no immediate response from Eritrea or the TPLF, who are staunch enemies.
The TPLF dominated Ethiopian politics for nearly three decades and fought a brutal border war between 1998 and 2000 with Eritrea that left tens of thousands dead.
Abiy came to power in 2018 and won the Nobel Prize the following year, largely for his effort to initiate rapprochement with Eritrea.
Explosions, shots
On Friday night, the rockets hit two airports in Ethiopia’s Amhara region, south of Tigray, an attack that the TPLF claimed on Saturday.
The federal government acknowledged that “airport areas have suffered damage,” while a doctor said two soldiers were killed and up to 15 wounded.
“Last night we inflicted severe damage on the military components of Gondar and Bahir Dar airports,” Getachew Reda, a senior TPLF member, said in a statement on Saturday, referring to the affected cities.
Military officials have vowed to keep the conflict contained in Tigray, and Abiy has repeatedly promised a swift and decisive victory.
But Amhara and Tigray are embroiled in long-running land disputes along their shared border that analysts fear could lead Amhara into conflict.
Thousands of Amhara militiamen have already made their way to Tigray to fight alongside federal forces, according to local security officials.
Both Bahir Dar and Gondar were quiet Saturday morning, residents said.
Describing the attacks on the airport, a Bahir Dar resident told AFP that there were “two strong explosions around 10:50 pm”.
“After that there were shots fired for 15 minutes, and then there was silence,” the resident said.
Humanitarian crisis
The Abiy government has said that the TPLF needs to be disarmed before negotiations can begin, frustrating world leaders who call for an immediate cessation of hostilities.
Abiy declared on Friday that the TPLF was “dying,” but the party has vowed to keep fighting.
Tigray’s communications blackout has made it difficult to assess competing claims about the fighting.
But there is little doubt that the region faces a serious humanitarian crisis, UN officials say.
Tigrayan leader Debretsion Gebremichael has said hundreds of thousands are displaced within the region, along with thousands who have already arrived in Sudan.
UN humanitarian coordinator Catherine Sozi warned that blackouts and road closures have made it difficult for the most vulnerable to access.
The international body is pressuring the government to have full humanitarian access.
Since Abiy came to power, the TPLF has complained of being marginalized and made a scapegoat for the country’s problems.
The dispute grew more intense after Tigray went ahead with his own elections in September, defying a national ban on all polls imposed due to the coronavirus pandemic, and tried to label him an illegitimate ruler.
(AFP)
