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Ethiopia’s army chief of staff says the army is in control of the capital of the challenging Tigray region, Mekele.
General Birhanu Jula made the comment on the state broadcaster on Saturday (local time).
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said in a separate statement: “We have entered Mekele without targeting innocent civilians.”
Earlier on Saturday, the Ethiopian army launched an offensive against the regional capital of Tigray in a quest to arrest the region’s defiant leaders.
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The city was being “heavily bombarded,” Tigray TV reported.
Humanitarians confirmed the shelling in Mekele, a densely populated city of half a million people, which immediately raised concern for civilian casualties. The Tigray leader could not be reached and the Ethiopian government had no comment.
Nariman El-Mofty / AP
A girl who fled the conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region cooks in front of her shelter in the Umm Rakouba refugee camp in Qadarif, eastern Sudan.
The Ethiopian government had warned the residents of Mekele that “there would be no mercy” if they did not distance themselves in time from the leaders of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. The United Nations said some residents fled when the military approached.
“The United States is deeply concerned about the worsening situation in the Tigray region,” US Ambassador to the UN Kelly Craft tweeted after the bombing began. He called for dialogue, the protection of civilians and access to aid.
“I invite everyone to pray for Ethiopia, where armed clashes have escalated and are causing a grave humanitarian situation,” Pope Francis tweeted.
Communications remain largely cut off with the Tigray region of some 6 million people, making it difficult to verify claims by warring parties in the conflict between the Ethiopian government and the TPLF, which once dominated the coalition. ruler of the country but was marginalized under the new Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. .
Abiy has rejected dialogue with the TPLF, most recently in his meeting on Friday with African Union envoys.
Nariman El-Mofty / AP
The women sit and breastfeed their children while Filippo Grandi, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, visits the Umm Rakouba refugee camp in eastern Sudan.
The offensive against Mekele has alarmed the international community. The Abiy government has said it would be careful not to harm civilians in the tank-led assault.
When Ethiopian forces entered, Major General Hassan Ibrahim promised to capture the city “on all fronts.”
“Some of the wanted people may go to their families or neighboring areas and try to hide for a few days. But our armed forces, after taking control of the city of Mekele, will be tasked with hunting down and capturing these criminals one by one wherever they are, ” he said in comments published by the Ethiopian News Agency.
The Tigray region has been almost completely isolated from the outside world since November 4, when Abiy announced a military offensive in response to a TPLF attack on a military base. Humanitarians have said that at least hundreds of people have died.
Nariman El-Mofty / AP
Civilians have fled the Tigray region in response to the conflict, fearing for their lives.
The fighting threatens to destabilize Ethiopia, which has been described as the hub of the strategic Horn of Africa.
With transport links cut, food and other supplies are running low in Tigray, home to 6 million people, and the United Nations has called for immediate and unhindered access to help.
Nearly 1 million people have been displaced in the region, the UN said in an update on Saturday, citing local authorities.
The office of the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, said it has “expressed grave concern about the consequences of the Ethiopian conflict for the civilian population and the spread of hate speech and reports of ethnic discrimination.”
Multiple crises grow. More than 43,000 refugees have fled to Sudan, where people struggle to provide them with food, shelter and care. The International Committee of the Red Cross says Tigray hospitals are running out of drugs. And fighting near camps hosting 96,000 Eritrean refugees in northern Ethiopia has put them in the line of fire.
Nariman El-Mofty / AP
Tens of thousands of refugees have fled to eastern Sudan.
UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi on Saturday visited the Umm Rakouba refugee camp in Sudan, which is home to some 10,000 refugees. He said that about $ 150 million is needed over the next six months to help Sudan manage the influx.
It is worrying that refugees in Sudan have told The Associated Press that Ethiopian forces near the border are preventing people from leaving. AP reporters saw crossings slow to a minimum in recent days. The Ethiopian government has not spoken.
“We have seen how the number of people declines but continues. Five to 600 a day is not a small number, make no mistake. It is true that there were days when they were in the thousands, but it also depends on the difficulty of moving through their country and on the border, ”said Grandi.
Access to Tigray is “the main obstacle at the moment,” he said, urging the Abiy government to “give us corridors or whatever they call it to provide assistance.”
