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ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia – Two airports in a neighboring state of Tigray, where Ethiopian troops are fighting local forces, were targeted by rocket fire on Friday night, the government said, as an 11-day conflict escalated in the region.
The two airports targeted were in Amhara state, the government said. One, Gondar airport, was hit on Friday, while a rocket aimed at the other, Bahir Dar airport, missed the target, the government said.
The ruling Tigray party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF, said the Tigray Defense Forces fired missiles from military bases in Bahir Dar and Gondar in retaliation for aerial tricycles carried out by Prime Minister Abiy’s forces. Ahmed in various parts of the state.
“As long as the attacks on the people of Tigray are not stopped, the attacks will intensify,” said Getachew Reda, a spokesman for the TPLF, in a statement on the Facebook page of the Tigray state communications office.
Abiy sent the Ethiopian armed forces on an offensive against local troops in Tigray last week, after accusing them of attacking federal troops. Hundreds of people have died in the escalating conflict.
The prime minister has said that government fighter jets were bombing military targets in Tigray, including depots of weapons and equipment controlled by local forces in Tigray. The government says its military operations are aimed at restoring the rule of law in the mountainous state of 5 million people.
A rocket that hit Gondar airport partially damaged it, said Awoke Worku, a spokesman for the central Gondar area, while a second simultaneously fired missile landed outside the Bahir Dar airport.
“The TPLF board is using the latest weapons within its arsenals,” the Ethiopian government’s emergency working group wrote on Twitter.
Forces from the Amhara regional state have been fighting alongside their federal counterparts against the Tigray fighters.
Gondar resident Yohannes Ayele said she heard a loud explosion in the city’s Azezo neighborhood at 10:30 pm.
Another resident of the area said the rocket had damaged the airport terminal building. The area was sealed off and fire fighting vehicles were parked outside, the resident added.
The United Nations, the African Union and others are concerned that the fighting could spread to other parts of Ethiopia, the second most populous country in Africa, and destabilize the broader Horn of Africa region.
More than 14,500 people have fled to neighboring Sudan, and the speed of the new arrivals “exceeds the current capacity to provide aid,” the UN refugee agency said on Friday.
The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission said it was dispatching investigators to the town of Mai Kadra in Tigray, where Amnesty International reported this week what it said was evidence of mass killings.
