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Addis Ababa denies that peace talks are imminent hours after the African Union appointed special envoys to help mediate the current crisis.
Ethiopia said on Saturday that its forces seized another city in their advance on the capital of the northern Tigray region, Mekelle, and rejected a push from the African Union to mediate the conflict.
The government has said it will reach Mekelle soon after taking the surrounding cities, the latest of which is Adigrat, Tigray’s second-largest city, about 116 kilometers (72 miles) north of the capital.
There was no immediate response available from the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) rebels who have promised “hell” for the advancing federal troops. The TPLF said on Friday that its forces were making progress on the southern and northern fronts.
A federal government statement said on Friday that Ethiopian troops seized the cities of Axum and Adwa.
The claims of all parties are difficult to verify because telephone lines and the Internet have been inactive since the beginning of the conflict on November 4 and the media is largely prohibited.
Ethiopia denied that talks on the escalating conflict in Tigray were imminent, just hours after three former African presidents were appointed to help mediate the two-week-long crisis.
Ethiopian troops are taking cities and advancing towards Mekelle despite resistance from regional forces that have used bulldozers to plow roads and are putting up resistance, the Addis Ababa government said.
An indication of the devastation can be seen in satellite images provided to the Reuters news agency by the commercial space company Maxar Technologies. The destroyed buildings lined the main road in the city of Dansha, where the conflict broke out, the images showed.
Members of the Ethiopian National Defense Force prepare to deploy near the border with Tigray [File: Tiksa Negeri/Reuters]Humanitarian crisis
Hundreds, possibly thousands of people have died, more than 30,000 refugees have fled to Sudan and Tigrayan forces have fired rockets at Ethiopia’s Amhara region and the neighboring nation of Eritrea.
The AU announced the appointment of former Presidents Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia and Kgalema Motlanthe of South Africa as special envoys.
“The main task of the special envoys is to involve all parties to the conflict with a view to ending hostilities, creating the conditions for an inclusive national dialogue to resolve all the problems that led to the conflict and restoring peace and stability. in Ethiopia, “AU said in a statement.
The Ethiopian government has repeatedly said it will not engage in talks with the TPLF, which it considers a rogue administration, pointing to what the government says was a surprise attack the group allegedly launched against federal troops in Dansha, prompting the conflict.
“The news circulating that the envoys will travel to Ethiopia to mediate between the federal government and the criminal element of TPLF is false,” tweeted a government task force in Tigray on Saturday.
200,000 refugees
On Friday, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres told reporters that Ethiopia was not interested in external mediation.
“Until now, the Ethiopian authorities have not accepted any form of external mediation,” he said.
He also called for the opening of humanitarian corridors to help civilians caught up in fighting in the Tigray region.
The UN said it was making plans for up to 200,000 refugees fleeing to neighboring Sudan, which is suffering a severe economic crisis. It now houses some 36,000 Ethiopians, many of them in transit camps near the border, according to the Sudan refugee commission.
Many said they left modest lives as farmers in just the clothes they were wearing to escape the heavy shelling, shootings and knife attacks in Tigray. Relatives and relatives were left behind, their fate unknown, they said.
The TPLF is extremely popular in its home region and dominated national politics from 1991 until Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took power in 2018.
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