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Abiy, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, sent the army to Tigray on 4 November with the aim of replacing the local authorities of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front with “legitimate bodies”, after the front during months will challenge the authority of the central government.
On Saturday night, my father announced that the army had regained control of Mekele, the capital of the region where the rebel leaders took refuge, and that they were now “pursuing” them.
Addressing the MPs, he told the leaders of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front: “I want you to listen to me: we have seen from the crisis room since yesterday afternoon, around midnight, riots in the area stretching from Hagari Salam to Abyei Adi ”, which are two towns located about fifty kilometers to the west. Mikkeli.
“We did not attack them at night because they took their wives, children and our captured soldiers,” he added, warning that “this is not going to continue.”
The near-total blackout in Tigray since the beginning of the conflict makes it difficult to independently verify the information provided by both camps.
There is no exact account of the conflict yet, but the International Crisis Group spoke on Friday of “thousands killed in the fighting.” More than 43,000 Ethiopians fled the Tigray province to neighboring Sudan.
On Monday, Abiy confirmed that the army did not cause civilian casualties during the operation to regain control of Mekele and other cities in Tigray. The international community has repeatedly expressed its concern about the impact of the military operation on the civilian population, and the United Nations spoke of the possibility of “war crimes.”
The prime minister confirmed that “no one was injured during the operation in Mikeli.”
On Sunday, the International Committee of the Red Cross reported that Mekele hospitals were overcrowded by the influx of wounded, 24 hours after the reconquest of the city was announced, without specifying whether they were military or civilian.
Tension between the Tigray People’s Liberation Front and Abyei has continued to rise since the latter became prime minister in 2018 and gradually excluded from the government the party that for thirty years had dominated the country’s political and security apparatus.
The tension culminated with the organization in September in Change of elections that Addis Ababa considered “illegal”, and then with the launching of an attack by Tigray forces on two military bases in the region, which the TPLF denies.
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