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* Federal military operation in Tigray began on Wednesday.
* Tigrayan forces confiscate weapons from military, says UN report
* International calls to moderation from both sides
By Giulia Paravicini and Dawit Endeshaw
ADDIS ABABA, Nov 7 (Reuters) – Ethiopian planes bombed the Tigray region on Friday and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed promised more airstrikes as the conflict escalated, when reports emerged that Tigrayan forces had taken control of sites and key federal military weapons.
Civilians in the northern region must avoid “collateral damage” by not gathering outside while the attacks continue, Abiy said in a televised speech Friday night, defying international calls for restraint from both sides.
The events signaled how quickly the multi-day conflict was plunging into a civil war that experts and diplomats warn would destabilize the country of 110 million people and damage the Horn of Africa as a whole.
A simmering dispute between Abiy’s federal government and its former Tigray allies broke out on Wednesday after Abiy ordered a military campaign. Abiy, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year, accused the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) of attacking a federal military base and trying to steal equipment. He said “the last red line” had been crossed.
The government then cut off phone and internet communications to the region, according to digital rights group Access Now, making it impossible to verify official accounts. The government accused the TPLF of disrupting communications.
Diplomats, regional security officials and aid workers have told Reuters that fighting is spreading in the northwestern part of the country, along Tigray’s border with the federal government-backing Amhara region, and near the border with Sudan and Eritrea.
Abiy said on Friday that government troops had taken control of the town of Dansha, near the border area, from the TPLF.
RISKS
After overthrowing a Marxist dictator in 1991, the TPLF led the country’s multi-ethnic ruling coalition until Abiy took office in 2018. During those decades, the Tigrayans dominated the military. Abiy has fired many high-ranking generals as part of a crackdown on past rights abuses and corruption that the Tigrayans complain about unjustly targeting them.
The Tigrayan forces are battle-hardened and possess significant stocks of military equipment, experts say. Its regional troops and associated militias number up to 250,000 men, according to think tank International Crisis Group.
One of the biggest risks is that the Ethiopian army will split along ethnic lines, with the Tigrayans defecting from the regional force. There are signs that it is already happening, experts said.
Tigrayan forces controlled the headquarters of the federal army’s Northern Command in the city of Mekelle, according to a United Nations internal security report dated Friday and seen by Reuters.
The Northern Command is one of the four military commands in the country and controls the border with Sudan, Djibouti and Eritrea.
Tigrayan forces have seized “heavy weapons” from several of the command’s warehouses, the report read. He said the command is the most heavily armed and contains “most of the army’s heavy weapons, including most of the country’s mechanized and armored units, artillery and air assets.”
The government is mobilizing troops from across the country and sending them to Tigray, risking a security vacuum in other parts of the country where ethnic violence is on the rise. More than 50 people were killed by gunmen from a rival ethnic group in western Ethiopia on Sunday, according to Amnesty International.
The redeployment of troops from near the border with Somalia will make that area “more vulnerable to possible incursions by Al Shabaab,” the Al Qaeda-linked insurgency that is trying to overthrow the government in Somalia, the UN report read. (Reporting by Giulia Paravicini and Dawit Endeshaw; written by Maggie Fick; edited by William Mallard)
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