Ethiopia has denied carrying out an attack over the weekend in a disputed border region with Sudan, blaming the Tigrayan rebels, whom the government has been fighting for more than a year.
The Sudanese army said in a statement Sunday that six soldiers were killed in the area of Al-Fashaga, fertile land which is the subject of a border conflict between Addis Ababa and Khartoum, after the attack according to it. armed groups and militias linked to the Ethiopian army.
This area was the scene of deadly clashes last year which, according to the army statement, left 90 Sudanese troops dead.
But Ethiopian government spokesman Legesse Tulu on Sunday called statements about an Ethiopian attack “baseless.”
Conversely, Mr. Legesse referred the responsibility for the attack to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), with which he has been at war since November 2020 and which threatens to march on the capital, Addis Ababa.
“A large group of insurgents, bandits and terrorists entered [depuis le Soudan] », Declared the spokesperson to the official channel Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation (EBC), without giving more details.
“The Ethiopian army and local militias destroyed them,” he added.
Mr. Legesse also claimed that the TPLF was training in Sudan and received support from ” [commanditaires] foreigners ”, which he did not specify.
“Stolen Territories”
Although Ethiopian farmers settled in the Al-Fashaga area for decades, Sudanese troops did not deploy there until after the outbreak of the conflict in Tigray, to “reclaim the stolen territories”. Addis Ababa considers it an invasion.
However, Mr. Legesse said Ethiopia wants to resolve this issue peacefully. “The Ethiopian army does not plan to carry out an attack on any sovereign country whatsoever,” he stressed.
“There is land that Sudanese forces have invaded. The government is working to resolve [la dispute] in a peaceful manner, through dialogue and negotiation. “
Since the Ethiopian Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, sent the federal army to Tigray in order to remove the authorities from the TPLF, who challenged his authority, the conflict has spread to the neighboring regions of Amhara and Tigray. ‘Afar.
Marked by atrocities and famine, the war has left several thousand dead and more than two million displaced.
The government is working to resolve [la dispute] peacefully
Last week, Mr. Ahmed, Nobel Peace Prize 2019, announced his departure to the front, to lead the counteroffensive there.
On Sunday, EBC claimed that the Afar army and special forces had captured the locality of Chifra there.
The surroundings of Chifra have been the scene of intense fighting in recent weeks, the TPLF seeking, according to sources, to seize in this area the control of a critical highway for the supply of Addis Ababa.
A source within the TPLF said on Monday that the fighting “continued”. The group’s spokesperson called the Prime Minister’s deployment a “circus” involving “grotesque war games”.