TIGRAY – Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region was hit by an airstrike on Tuesday, local officials said, two days after rebel authorities said they were ready for a ceasefire.
At least one person was injured in the reported drone attack on the regional capital, Mekele, said Kibrom Gebreselassie, a senior official at Ayder Referral Hospital, Tigray’s largest.
“An injured patient has arrived in Ayder. The total number of casualties is not yet known,” he said on Twitter.
The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which has been at war with the Ethiopian army and its allies for nearly two years, said a military drone “bombed” Mekele University in the early hours of Tuesday, causing injuries and material damage.
“This comes after the Tigray government formed a negotiating team and declared itself ready for peace talks,” TPLF spokeswoman Kindeya Gebrehiwot said on Twitter.
Dimtsi Weyane, a TPLF-affiliated TV channel broadcasting in Tigray, said its station was also hit, forcing it off the air and “causing serious human and material damage”.
AFP has not been able to independently verify these claims. Access to northern Ethiopia is severely restricted and Tigray has been blocked for over a year.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed‘s government has not commented on the reported strike. Government spokespersons did not respond to requests for comment.
Tigray has been hit by several airstrikes since fighting resumed between government forces and their allies and TPLF rebels in northern Ethiopia in late August.
‘SEIZE THIS MOMENT’
The return to fighting shattered a March ceasefire that had halted the worst bloodshed and dashed hopes for a peaceful resolution to a war that began nearly two years ago.
The new offensives have also drawn in Eritrean troops and halted aid shipments to Tigray, where the UN says shortages of food, fuel and medicine are causing a humanitarian catastrophe.
Both sides accused the other of firing first, and fighting spread from southern Tigray to other fronts further north and west.
On Sunday, the TPLF said it was ready for a ceasefire and would accept an African Union-led peace process, removing an obstacle to negotiations with Abiy’s government.
The TPLF said a negotiating team including spokesman Getachew Reda and General Tsadkan Gebretensae, a former Ethiopian army chief currently in Tigray’s central military command, was “ready to deploy immediately”.
The international community has urged the warring parties to seize the moment of peace.
“The United States welcomes the statement by the Tigray regional authority,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Monday.
“It is high time for both sides to stop fighting and turn to dialogue to resolve their differences. The Ethiopian government has declared its willingness to hold talks anytime, anywhere and should seize this moment.
Addis Ababa has yet to officially comment on the openness of Tigrayan authorities, who dominated national politics for nearly three decades until Abiy came to power in 2018.
GRINDING WAR
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, AU Commission chief Moussa Faki Mahamat and the East African bloc IGAD have in recent days welcomed an offer from the “regional government of Tigray” to start peace talks.
Abiy’s government has declared the TPLF a terrorist organization and considers its claim to authority in Tigray illegitimate.
Countless civilians have been killed since war broke out in Africa’s second most populous country, and serious abuses against civilians by all sides have been documented.
In March, the United Nations said at least 304 civilians had been killed in airstrikes “apparently carried out by the Ethiopian Air Force” over the previous three months.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has documented airstrikes and drone strikes on refugee camps, a hotel and a market.
She warned that disproportionate attacks on non-military targets could constitute war crimes.
The government has accused the TPLF of staging civilian deaths in airstrikes to stoke outrage and insists it only targets military installations.
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Abiy sent troops to Tigray to overthrow the TPLF in November 2020 in response to attacks on federal army camps, he said.
But the TPLF retook most of Tigray in a surprise return in June 2021.
It then spread to neighboring Afar and Amhara regions before the fighting reached a stalemate.
- AFP
