(Addis Ababa) An air raid targeted Mekele, capital of Tigray, on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday, several hours after the rebel authorities in this Ethiopian region announced that they wanted to continue their “counter-offensive” in the north of the country.
Posted at 8:16 p.m.
After a five-month truce, fighting resumed on August 24, around the southeastern tip of Tigray, between Ethiopian pro-government troops (federal army, regional forces and allied militias) and Tigrayan rebels, in conflict since November 2020 and who accuse each other of having restarted hostilities.
“Night drone raid on Mekele, no imaginable military target,” tweeted Getachew Reda, spokesman for the rebel authorities in Tigray, in the night, adding that “at least three bombs had been dropped”.
The Dr Kibrom Gebreselassie, medical director of Ayder Hospital, Mekele’s main establishment, spoke on Twitter of a “drone raid in Mekele around midnight” which caused “victims arriving at the hospital”.
Journalists do not have access to northern Ethiopia, making independent verification impossible. Mobile phone and internet networks in these areas are also hit or miss.
The Ethiopian government’s communications service could not immediately be reached.
Earlier in the day, Mr Getachew told a webcast press briefing that the Tigrayan rebels, after initially ‘defending (their) positions’, had now launched a cross-border counter-offensive. of Tigray.
“We are waging a defensive war” and “we remain open to any negotiation”, he assured, while vowing to continue this counter-offensive to “neutralize” the military reinforcements sent by the government to northern Ethiopia. .
Questioned by AFP on Tuesday, the Ethiopian government recalled its “efforts for peace and the concrete measures taken” in this direction, and said it was “again determined to peacefully resolve the conflict which has once again been unleashed” by the “terrorists” of Tigray.
The army withdrew on Saturday from Kobo, a town in the Amhara region located about fifteen kilometers south of Tigray, to, according to the government, “avoid massive casualties” among civilians in the face of an attack by rebels.
traffic jams
In recent days, according to diplomatic, humanitarian and local sources, the rebels have advanced about fifty kilometers south, inside Amhara, as well as south-east, in Afar.
On Tuesday, the APDA, an NGO active in Afar, said it had already identified 18,000 people displaced there by the resumption of fighting and said it feared that their number would increase in the face of the advance of Afar rebels towards the ‘Amhara.
The roads “are blocked by people fleeing” the advance of the rebels, said the APDA on Twitter.
According to Getachew Reda, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed “continues to make miscalculation after miscalculation by continuing to send reinforcements”: “We will continue to neutralize them, which will probably lead us more and more inside the Amhara region”.
“We are not particularly interested in controlling this area but, as long as the forces unleashed against us continue to threaten the security of our people, we will continue to take appropriate measures to neutralize them” and “this will determine where we will stop. “, he threatened.
Calls for dialogue
Quickly defeated in November 2020 by the Ethiopian army sent by Mr. Abiy to dislodge the executive of Tigray who disputed his authority and whom he accused of having attacked military bases, the Tigrayan rebels resumed in mid-2021 the quasi- entire region thanks to a counter-offensive which has seen them approach Addis Ababa.
They then retreated to Tigray, accusing the government of “besieging” the region, which the latter denies.
The international community has multiplied in recent days calls for a cessation of hostilities and dialogue. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres notably spoke on August 25 with Abiy Ahmed, then with the leader of the rebel authorities Debretsion Gebremichael.
“It seems obvious that we cannot count on the international community to retain Abiy […] We always have to depend on our strengths,” Getachew said on Tuesday.
Since June, the two parties had repeated their readiness to negotiate, without ever ceasing to oppose the terms of future discussions.
The truce had allowed the resumption of the delivery by road of humanitarian aid to Tigray, which had been interrupted for three months and which now seems to be threatened again.
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.
The region has also been deprived for more than a year of electricity, telecommunications, banking services or fuel.