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Ethiopia’s ambassador to the European Union says a cyber attack is behind a communications blackout in the Tigray region.
The region was embroiled in fierce battles throughout November between local militias and the Ethiopian Armed Forces, forcing tens of thousands to flee to Sudan.
On Friday (December 11), Ambassador Hirut Zemene refuted reports that the government was behind the blackout, making it difficult to access information on the ground.
Instead, he told EUobserver that recent evidence of a cyberattack against Ethio Telecom has emerged in early November in Mekelle, the regional state headquarters for Tigray.
“It is not a simple malfunction, it is being resolved and they say that physically nothing happened to it. Physically it is fine, it was not attacked, but you know that it is the software that was affected by this cyber attack,” he said. most of the region is now back online.
The comments come amid international media reports of civilians caught between an indiscriminate campaign of bombing by government forces and government-allied ethnic militias.
Zemene also questioned that version.
He accused the leadership of the Tigray region’s ruling party, the TPLF, of having used people as human shields in the city of Mekelle.
But he noted that some civilians may have been inadvertently attacked by government forces.
“Can we say that there will be a 100 percent margin of non-civilians being attacked? We would be lying,” he said.
He also attributed the reports on the involvement of Eritrean forces as false.
Instead, he said that a local textile factory in Tigray was producing Eritrean uniforms in a scheme devised by TPLF leaders.
Then those uniforms were put on the Eritrean refugees, he said.
“There are about 200,000 refugees of Eritrean origin in the Tigray camps in Ethiopia,” he said.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres recently said that the Ethiopian prime minister had told him that there is no evidence of Eritrean soldiers on the ground.
But a US State Department official claimed otherwise, describing “credible” reports of Eritrea’s military involvement.
International and independent media do not yet have permission within Tigray to verify government accounts.
“It will definitely be allowed but it will be a very gradual process,” the ambassador said, when pressed.
The fighting has sparked fears of further instability, as Ethiopian forces also face radical militants like Al-Shabaab in Somalia.
Zemene says those forces have remained in place and have not withdrawn, as reported elsewhere.
Meanwhile, he noted that humanitarian corridors allowing aid to the region have also been opened amid plans to bring some 45,000 Eritrean refugees home to Sudan.
He said the conflict is over and the country is carrying out reforms started under the leadership of its Nobel Prize-winning prime minister, Abiy Ahmed.
The plan is to hold national elections next May, following last month’s postponement, which is said to have prompted the TPLF’s initial assault on a camp that housed federal troops.
Those elections and reforms, Zemene says, must be better understood by the European Union in light of the fighting.
“We want the understanding from the European Union that this is something that can be managed within the capacity of the government with regard to the peace and security situation,” he said.
Ethiopia is among the top recipients of EU development aid, worth around € 815 million.
