(Addis Ababa) Ethiopian aircraft bombed Mekele, capital of the rebel region of Tigray, on Friday, marking a sharp escalation in the fighting which resumed Wednesday in the north of the country, after five months of truce.
Posted at 1:04 p.m.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s federal government did not immediately confirm the strike, but simultaneously announced in a statement its intention to carry out “actions” in Tigray, calling on the population to stay away from military targets.
On the other hand, he categorically denied the rebels’ accusations that the federal army had killed civilians.
In the early afternoon, a spokesman for the rebel authorities, Kindeya Gebrehiwot, announced that the Ethiopian air force had “dropped bombs on a residential area and a kindergarten in Mekele”, killing and injuring civilians. .
An official at Ayder Hospital, the city’s principal, said in a message to AFP that his establishment had received four dead, including two children, and nine injured.
“Ethiopian military aviation is clearly responding to the attack launched against Ethiopia by targeting only military sites,” the government’s communications service replied in a message to AFP.
He accused the Tigrayan rebels of “laying fake body bags in civilian areas to claim that the air force attacked civilians”.
Government and rebels of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) blame each other for the resumption of fighting on the southeastern border of the region, which ended a five-month truce on Wednesday.
Since it broke out in November 2020, the war in northern Ethiopia has claimed several thousand lives, displaced more than two million people and plunged hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians into near-famine conditions. according to the United Nations.
International calls
This escalation seems to confirm the concerns of the international community, which fears a resumption of large-scale conflict and fears that the meager hopes of peace negotiations glimpsed since June, but never materialized, will be dashed.
As of Wednesday, many countries and international organizations, the United Nations, the United States and the European Union in the lead, called for a cessation of hostilities and a peaceful resolution to the conflict which has lasted for 21 months.
“While the international community is calling on the two warring parties to de-escalate, Abiy Ahmed has chosen to send his air force to attack civilians in Mekele,” rebel spokesman Getachew Reda protested on Twitter.
He called on the international community to “stop pampering Abiy” and “put pressure on the regime to push it into good faith negotiations”.
On Friday, the Ethiopian authorities also appealed to the international community, asking it to “condemn” the “permanent provocations” of the Tigrayan rebels and to push them “towards the option of peace proposed by the government”.
Residents on the run
Before the bombardment of Mekele, the fighting was localized in two areas of the Amhara and Afar regions surrounding the southeastern tip of Tigray, and did not appear to have spread.
On Friday, the fighting continued for the third consecutive day, according to residents.
Journalists do not have access to northern Ethiopia, making independent verification impossible. The mobile network in these areas is also hit or miss.
“I hear the sound of heavy weapons, but no gunshots,” said Friday at midday, on condition of anonymity, an official from the Amhara locality of Kobo, about 500 kilometers north of Addis Ababa and about ten kilometers south of the border with Tigray.
“Little clear information” is circulating, which creates “confusion, fear and uncertainty” among the population, he added, adding that “women and children are trying to leave the city”, where some public services and businesses have ceased their activity.
Also in the Amhara region, a resident of Mehago, a Tigray border area located about thirty kilometers northwest of Kobo, said on Friday that he had heard “explosions and gunshots” since the day before.
“Large groups of residents are fleeing the surrounding communities,” he told AFP.
In the Afar region, “fighting continues” on Friday between the localities of Yalo and Gulina, respectively located about fifteen and twenty kilometers from the Tigray border, a humanitarian source told AFP.