[ad_1]
The government of Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said it had captured another city in the northern Tigray region after nearly two weeks of fighting in a conflict that is already spreading to Eritrea and destabilizing the Horn of Africa in general.
Hundreds have died, at least 20,000 refugees have fled to Sudan and there have been reports of atrocities since Abiy ordered airstrikes and a ground offensive against the rulers of Tigray for challenging their authority.
The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which rules the region of more than 5 million people, has accused Eritrea of sending tanks and thousands of soldiers across the border to support Ethiopian federal troops.
Tigray forces fired rockets at Eritrea over the weekend.
A task force created by Abiy, Africa’s youngest leader, to handle the conflict said that federal troops had “liberated” the city of Alamata from the TPLF.
“They fled, taking with them some 10,000 prisoners,” he added, without specifying where they were from.
There was no immediate comment from Tigray leaders about the events in Alamata, near the border with the regional state of Amhara, about 120 kilometers from Mekelle, the capital of Tigray.
The fighting has spread beyond Tigray to Amhara, whose local forces are allied with Abiy’s forces. On Friday, rockets were fired at two airports in Amhara in what the TPLF said was retaliation for government airstrikes.
Tigray leaders accuse Abiy, who belongs to the largest Oromo ethnic group, of persecuting and purging them from the government and security forces for the past two years. He says they rose up against him attacking a military base.
The Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) has around 140,000 personnel and extensive experience fighting Islamist militants in Somalia, rebel groups in border regions, and a two-decade-long border clash with Eritrea.
But many senior officers were Tigrayan, much of their most powerful weaponry is there and the TPLF has taken over the headquarters of the mighty Northern Command in Mekelle.
There are reports of desertions of Tigrayan members of the ENDF. And the TPLF itself has a formidable history, leading the rebel march to Addis Ababa that toppled a Marxist dictatorship in 1991 and enduring the brunt of a 1998-2000 war with Eritrea that killed hundreds of thousands.
Eritrea President Isaias Afwerki, a longtime enemy of Tigray’s leaders, controls a vast permanent army that the US CIA estimates at 200,000.
Abiy once fought alongside the Tigrayans and was a partner in government with them until 2018 when he took office, earning early applause for seeking peace with Eritrea, beginning to liberalize the economy, and opening up a repressive political system.
The United Nations and others have urged him to negotiate with the Tigrayans and there have been reports that the government of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni could mediate. But the Abiy Tigray task force denied this, reiterating that it was committed to “upholding the rule of law” in Tigray.
He has previously said that there will be no talks until the Tigrayan leaders are arrested.
A spokesman for UNCHR, the UN Agency for Refugees in Ethiopia, said the situation is “almost catastrophic” and that there have been armed clashes between the federal government and regional forces since 3 November.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, Ann Encontre said this means that all communication systems have been shut down and no flights, trucks or vehicles with limited food have been allowed into the market.
He said that more than 21,000 people have left areas of Ethiopia to seek refuge in Sudan, where refugee camps were unprepared for such an influx of people.
He added that there are around 100,000 Eritrean refugees housed in four camps in Tigray and it is almost impossible to provide them without electricity, clean water and sanitation services, while also facing the coronavirus pandemic.
[ad_2]