Rebel Tigrayans fire rockets at neighboring Eritrea in escalation of Ethiopia conflict
By Lesley Wroughton,
Ebrahim Hamid AFP/Getty Images
At least two rockets were fired from Ethiopia into neighboring Eritrea overnight Saturday as the conflict between the rebellious faction in the country’s Tigray region and the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed spilled across the northern border, further raising fears that more countries in the Horn of Africa could be drawn into the conflict.
In a major escalation of a two-week-old conflict, Tigray’s President Debretsion Gebremichael said his forces had fired missiles at Eritrea’s capital Asmara in retaliation for its siding with the federal government in Addis Ababa.
“As long as troops are here fighting, we will take any legitimate military target and we will fire,” he told the Associated Press, accusing Eritrea of sending troops into the Tigray region at the same time that federal troops have been deployed.
“We will fight them on all fronts with whatever means we have,” he said. On Friday, rockets were also fired by Tigray at two airports in the neighboring state of Amhara.
[Ethiopia conflict escalates as army sends more troops to Tigray region]
The U.S. Embassy in Asmara reported a series of loud noises were heard in the Eritrean capital but said there was no indication that the main international airport was struck.
“Unconfirmed reports indicate they may have been explosive devices believed to be in the vicinity of Asmara international airport,” the embassy said in a security alert to U.S. citizens.
The conflict erupted on Nov. 4 when Abiy accused the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, the powerful faction that governs the northern state, of attacking federal military bases and ordered troops into the area.
Abiy, last year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, has ignored calls by the international community for an immediate de-escalation and has pushed back at efforts by the African Union to mediate in the conflict.
Without directly mentioning the rocket attacks in Eritrea, Abiy said on Twitter: “Ethiopia is more than capable of attaining the objectives of the operation by itself,” an apparent rebuttal of Tigrayan assertions that Eritrea is involved.
Eritrea has not commented on the attack.
The United Nations has warned of a humanitarian disaster as some 25,000 Ethiopian refugees have already streaming across the border into Sudan. Communications and transport links with Tigray have been cut and millions are at risk as food and fuel supplies run low, the U.N. has said.
Tiksa Negeri
Reuters
Members of Amhara region militias ride on their truck as they head to the mission to face the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), in Sanja, Amhara region near a border with Tigray, Ethiopia Nov. 9, 2020.
In addition, there are growing fears of ethnic targeting. The TPLF has denied allegations that scores of civilians were hacked to death by its irregular militia last week in the town of Mai-Kadra in south western Tigray. In a report last week, rights group Amnesty International said it had confirmed the massacre of “a very large number” of civilians, many of them from the neighboring state of Amhara.
The conflict with Tigray has so far killed hundreds of people on both sides. The TPLF military leadership is battle-hardened from both the 1998-2000 war with Eritrea and the guerrilla war to topple Marxist dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1991.
The TPLF dominated the coalition ruling Ethiopia for decades until Abiy’s rise to power.
With fighting in the north, analysts have warned of a security vacuum elsewhere in the country where ethnic violence has escalated since Abiy took over in 2018, when he introduced political reforms that also lifted the lid on long-repressed tensions among the many ethnic groups in the country.
Separately, gunmen in western Ethiopia killed at least 34 people in an attack on a bus on Saturday, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission said in a statement. The “gruesome” attack took place in the Benishangul-Gumuz region, the commission said.
“The attack is a grim addition to the human cost which we bear collectively,” said commission head, Daniel Bekele, in a statement.
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