The Ethiopian government announced on Wednesday that fighting had broken out between its forces and forces in the Tigray region on the border with Sudan in a major escalation in hostilities following the violation of a four-month-long ceasefire last week, Reuters was quoted as saying. .
The Government Communications Services Authority in Ethiopia said on Wednesday that the Tigray Front had launched what it called an “invasion” of Sudanese border areas in the Amhara region, and that Ethiopian forces were trying to repel the attack.
“We call on the international community to make an effort to put pressure on the Tigray Front to reach a peaceful solution to the conflict,” the office said in a statement.
On Tuesday, the Sudanese Foreign Ministry summoned Ethiopian Ambassador Yebtal Amira to protest his claims that a plane with weapons had been shot down from Khartoum.
Director General of African Affairs in Sudan’s Foreign Affairs Ambassador Fadl Abdullah Fadl conveyed to the Ethiopian Ambassador the ministry’s condemnation of statements he made to the media on Monday in which he addressed the plane shot down by Ethiopian forces. with weapons for the Tigray People’s Liberation Front forces that violated Ethiopian airspace through Sudan.
A previous mining operation targeted the town of Mekele, the capital of northern Ethiopia’s Tigray region, on Tuesday evening, according to rebels in control of the region and a local hospital official.
In a tweet on Twitter, rebel spokesman Tigray Getachew Reda stated that “A nighttime drone strike was carried out on Mikkeli”, emphasizing that “there are no military targets at the target site.”
In turn, Dr. Cypriot Gebrselassie, head of the main hospital in Mikkeli, confirmed in a tweet that “a drone strike in Mikkeli around midnight” resulted in “injured people who were taken to the hospital,” without specifying their number.
Subsequently, Kimrom Gebreselassie, director of Ethiopia’s Ayder General Hospital, said the airstrike hit another hospital in the northern region’s capital Tigray late Tuesday night, less than a week after a four-month-long ceasefire was broken.
Gebrselassie, whose hospital received the victims of the airstrike, tweeted that Makli General Hospital had been bombed. The scale of human and material losses is not yet clear.
Journalists are denied access to the northern part of Ethiopia, which makes it impossible to independently verify information.
Also damaged or disconnected mobile communication networks and the Internet in these areas.
After a five-month truce, fighting resumed between the federal army and the Tigray rebels on 24 August, with both sides trading accusations of fomenting a confrontation.
On Tuesday, the rebels announced that they remain open to negotiations with the federal government, but at the same time, they are determined to continue their offensive in northern Ethiopia as long as government military reinforcements pose a “threat” to their region.
Diplomatic and humanitarian sources and eyewitnesses said that in recent days, the rebels have advanced about 50 kilometers south of the Tigray border, within the neighboring Amhara region, and also southeast of the Afar region.
After being defeated by the federal army in November 2020, the Tigray rebels regained control of most of the region in mid-2021 after a counterattack that brought them closer to the capital Addis Ababa.
After a five-month truce, hostilities resumed between the federal army and the Tigray rebels on 24 August, with mutual accusations of fomenting a confrontation.
Less than a week ago, 17 people, including 3 children, were killed in an Ethiopian Air Force bombing of Mekele, the capital of Tigray, according to northern Ethiopian authorities and aid workers.
“The plane … dropped bombs on a residential area and a kindergarten in Mikkeli. Civilians were killed and injured,” said rebel spokesman Tigray Kindia Gebrihiot. Two humanitarian sources also said they had been told of the airstrike on Mikkeli.
The Ethiopian government confirmed that its flights were targeting “only military targets” in Tigray, describing the announcement by rebel authorities in the Tigray region of an airstrike that killed four civilians in Mekele, the region’s capital, as “minor allegations”.
