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Ethiopian Defense Minister Kenea Yadeta on Wednesday denied allegations that Eritrea is assisting Ethiopia in the fight against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front or TPLF in the Tigray region.
The statement comes after Tigray’s president on Tuesday accused Eritrea of attacking his region at Ethiopia’s request, saying “the war has now advanced to a different stage.”
Up to 200,000 refugees could arrive in Sudan as they flee the deadly conflict, authorities said Wednesday, while the first details are emerging of largely isolated civilians under increasing tension.
Communications remain almost completely cut off with the Tigray region a week after Ethiopia’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced a military offensive in response to an alleged attack by regional forces.
He insists that there will be no negotiations with a regional government that he considers illegal until his ruling “clique” is arrested and his well-stocked arsenal is destroyed.
Reports of attacks on ethnic Tigrayans in Ethiopia increased, the Tigray Office of Communication Affairs said in a Facebook post.
The administration of Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa on Thursday announced demonstrations in support of the federal government’s measures there and in other cities in the Oromia and Amhara regions, along with a blood drive for the Ethiopian army.
The European Union, the African Union and others have called on Abiy to reduce the escalation immediately as the conflict threatens to destabilize the strategic but vulnerable Horn of Africa region.
The federal government of Ethiopia and the regional government of Tigray, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, blame each other for starting the conflict. Each considers the other as illegal.
The TPLF dominated Ethiopia’s ruling coalition for years before Abiy took office in 2018, but has since parted ways, accusing the prime minister’s administration of targeting and marginalizing its officials.
Experts have likened the fighting to an interstate conflict, with each side heavily armed. The Tigray region has about a quarter of a million fighters, along with four of the six mechanized divisions of the Ethiopian army.
That’s a legacy of Ethiopia’s long border war with Eritrea, which made peace after Abiy came to power, but still faces bitter differences with the TPLF.
