Ethiopia, “after having repositioned a massive military force in Eritrea, has now launched a joint offensive with the invading forces of Eritrea”, in the north of this border region, announced the command of the rebel forces in a communicated.
The two armies “attack from neighboring Eritrea”, told AFP Kindeya Gebrehiwot, a spokesman for the rebel authorities.
AFP was unable to verify these claims. Journalists have no access to northern Ethiopia, where Tigray is located, or to Eritrea, making independent verification impossible, and telecommunications networks there operate haphazardly.
“The enemy (…) allied with a foreign force (…) has started a total war”, also accuses the command of the rebel forces.
The Ethiopian government did not immediately respond to AFP’s requests.
In a statement, he simply said that the army remained in a “defensive posture” to “counter the attacks launched in all directions” by the rebels.
Responding to calls for a cessation of hostilities and dialogue, he considered unacceptable the “rhetoric of both sides” of the international community which puts “the government and a belligerent clique” on the same footing.
– Historical enemy –
After a five-month truce, fighting resumed on August 24 around the southeastern tip of Tigray between the Ethiopian federal government and the rebel authorities of Tigray, in conflict since November 2020 and who accuse each other of having started these new hostilities. .
During the first phase of the conflict, Eritrean forces had already supported the Ethiopian army sent to Tigray by Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to dislodge the dissident authorities in the region, whom he accused of having attacked military bases.
The Eritrean soldiers have been accused of multiple abuses.
The rebel authorities in Tigray come from the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), a party that de facto governed Ethiopia for nearly 30 years until Abiy Ahmed came to power in 2018.
From 1998 to 2000, a deadly conflict opposed Ethiopia and the young Eritrea – former independent Ethiopian province since 1993 – over territorial disputes along the border with Tigray and rooted a stubborn hatred between Asmara and the TPLF.
After having denied it for a long time, Mr. Abiy admitted in March 2021 the presence of Eritrean troops in Tigray, ensuring that they were on the way out.
The rebels also claim that the Ethiopian army – backed by regional forces and local militias – has, like the day before, carried out “repeated breakthrough attempts” on Thursday in southern Tigray, in the neighboring region of Amhara.
After the resumption of fighting on August 24, the rebels launched a “counter-offensive” in southern Tigray and had advanced on Monday by around fifty kilometers in the Amhara region, according to concordant sources.
On Wednesday, they had already said they were attacked by Ethiopian and Eritrean troops in Wolkait, a district in western Tigray.
If these assertions are correct, the fighting, initially localized around the southeastern tip of Tigray, is now taking place on three fronts: in the south, in the west and now in the north of the region.
In the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, the capital of Tigray, Mekele, was also the target of a second air raid since the resumption of fighting.
The international community has multiplied, without success, for a week calls for an end to the fighting. But the hopes of negotiations glimpsed since June now seem far away.
Quickly defeated in November 2020 by the troops sent by Mr. Abiy to dislodge the executive of Tigray, the Tigrayan rebels took over almost all of the region in mid-2021 – with the exception of the west – thanks to counter-offensive which saw them approaching Addis Ababa.
They then retreated to Tigray, accusing the government of “besieging” the region, which the latter denies.
The toll of this deadly war is unknown. But it has displaced more than two million people and plunged hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians into near-famine conditions, according to the UN.
Tigray has also been deprived for more than a year of electricity, telecommunications, banking services or fuel.
