Ethiopia Resumes Tigray Airstrikes In Resurged Conflict

,menafan– Somtribune)

At least four people, including two children, were killed and nine wounded in Ethiopia’s airstrikes on Friday on Mekele, the capital of the rebel region of Tigre, according to an official at the city’s main hospital.

Ayder Hospital in Mekele “found 13 patients, four of whom had died. Two of the dead are children,” its medical director Dr Kibrom Gebreselassie told AFP.

The bombing in the heart of this broken-down region of northern Ethiopia marks a sharp escalation after renewed fighting on Wednesday between government forces and Tigreyan rebels of the Tigre People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) on the region’s southern border. The renewed violence ended a five-month ceasefire.

“At midday, a plane (…) dropped bombs on a residential area and a kindergarten in Mekele. Civilians were killed and wounded,” Kindeya Gebrehivot, a spokesman for the rebel authorities, told AFP in a message. Humanitarian sources said they were informed of the airstrike in Mekele, but did not provide details or casualties.

Soon after, the federal government announced in a statement that, although it remained “fully prepared” to negotiate unconditionally with the insurgents, it was intended to “target military forces (…) in opposition to peace.” action to be taken”. He called on the population living in Tigre to “stay away from areas where rebel military equipment and training facilities are located”.

The resumption of fighting is worrying the international community, which fears a resumption of large-scale conflict and little hope of peace talks will be dashed.

Since Wednesday, several countries and international organizations led by the United Nations, the United States and the European Union have called for an end to hostilities and a peaceful resolution to the 21-month conflict.

Since it began in November 2020, the war in northern Ethiopia has killed several thousand people, displaced more than two million and put hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians into starvation, according to the United Nations.

The ceasefire reached in late March allowed Tigre to gradually resume the delivery of humanitarian aid by road, after a three-month halt.

Since late June, the Ethiopian government and the Tigrayan rebels have repeatedly expressed their desire to enter peace talks, but continue to disagree on the modalities. The federal government wants immediate talks without any preconditions under the auspices of the African Union (AU).

The rebels are demanding the restoration of power, telecommunications and banking services to Tigre and rejecting the mediation of the AU’s High Representative Olusegun Obasanjo.

by Redaction

with AFP

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