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Two rockets have hit Ethiopia’s Amhara state amid fierce fighting in neighboring Tigray region, the government says.
The explosions occurred in Bahir Dar and Gondar late on Friday, according to the Amhara communications office and state news.
One of the rockets hit Gondar airport and left it partially damaged, according to a spokesman for central Gondar, while a second, fired simultaneously, is believed to have landed on the outskirts of Bahir Dar airport.
Investigations are now underway to establish whether they are related to the fighting in Tigray. It is not known if there were any victims.
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Hundreds of people have been killed in clashes between government troops and forces loyal to the Tigray regional government since Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sent his national defense force into action on November 4, following an alleged attack on a federal military base in area.
Amhara regional state forces have been fighting alongside federal government forces.
As violence has escalated in recent days, dozens of civilians have been stabbed and killed with machetes in the northern region of Tigray, according to Amnesty International.
While the organization has not confirmed who was responsible for the killings, witnesses have said that forces loyal to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the ruling party in Tigray, were behind the killings after suffering the defeat of the federal defense forces of Ethiopia.
It is reported that the majority of the victims were ethnic Amhara.
Ethiopia’s human rights commission says it will investigate the killings, which it said carried a “reasonable risk” of being an ethnic target.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed called for Tigray to surrender
The United Nations has warned of possible war crimes.
Communications and transport links have recently been cut in the Tigray region, making it difficult to verify the allegations.
Abiy, who last year won the Nobel Peace Prize for his sweeping political reforms, called on the rebel forces to surrender and rejected calls for talks and scaling back.
The refugees flee from Tigray and cross the border into neighboring Sudan.
Months of riots have left the country on the brink of civil war, with the risk that the conflict will spread to other parts of the country and destabilize the wider region of the Horn of Africa.
More than 14,500 Ethiopian refugees have crossed into Sudan since the fighting began.
Ethiopia is the second most populous nation in Africa, with around 110 million inhabitants.
