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ADDIS ABABA: The Ethiopian army on Sunday threatened an all-out assault on Mekele, the capital of the breakaway Tigray region and the seat of the local government it seeks to evict, warning civilians to flee while they can.
“The next decisive battle is to surround Mekele with tanks,” Dejene Tsegaye, a military spokesman, told state broadcasters on Sunday, threatening a siege of the city.
He added a warning to the half million residents of Mekele: “Save yourself. A directive has been communicated to him to disassociate himself from this board, after that there will be no mercy. “
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize last year, launched a military campaign against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) on November 4, accusing his forces of attacking two federal military camps in the region. and the party to challenge its government and seek to destabilize it.
A communications blackout in the region has made it difficult to verify the claims of both parties to the conflict, but hundreds of people are reported to have died while tens of thousands have fled the fighting to neighboring Sudan.
The Abiy government has called for the capture of a number of villages in recent days, including the ancient city of Aksum and the city of Edega Hamus, 100 kilometers (60 miles) north of Mekele.
“Defense forces have controlled the town of Edaga Hamus, which is on the Adigrat to Mekele highway,” Ethiopia’s State of Emergency, a government agency, said on Sunday. “The defense force is currently marching towards the last objective of the campaign, the city of Mekele.”
The TPLF claimed on Saturday that civilians had been killed during an “intense bombardment” of the city of Adigrat by the Ethiopian Defense Forces (EDF). The government insists it does not target civilians.
The TPLF led the overthrow of Mengistu Hailemariam, head of the Derg military regime in Ethiopia, in 1991 and dominated the country’s politics until Abiy became prime minister in 2018.
The party continues to rule Tigray, one of 10 regional states under Ethiopia’s system of ethnic federalism, according to which regions are bounded by ethnicity and language.
TPLF leaders have complained of being marginalized by Abiy and accused of the country’s problems. The bitter dispute with the central government led the TPLF to hold its own elections this year in defiance of a national postponement due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Abiy has rejected all calls for peace, including those from the African Union, which plans to send three former national presidents as special envoys in the coming days, the United States and the UN, which has warned of impending humanitarian disaster.
His government views the TPLF as a criminal administration and appears determined to win the military battle rather than negotiate.
Military action has already spread beyond the borders of Tigray with the TPLF firing rockets at Asmara, the capital of neighboring Eritrea to the north, which it accuses of supporting the Ethiopian government, and the city of Bahir Dar to the southwest.
The campaign has seen fighter jets bombarding Tigray and heavy fighting, while Amnesty International has documented a gruesome massacre in which “dozens, and probably hundreds, of people were stabbed or hacked to death” in the south-western city of Mai-Kadra.
The UN has called for the opening of humanitarian corridors to allow aid agencies access and has said it is preparing for up to 200,000 refugees to flee the unrest in the coming months.
