Tigray fighters enter Ethiopia’s Afar region, stoking fears of new conflict

Tigray was the centre of a devastating two-year warfare that pitted the TPLF against Ethiopia’s national army.

Ethiopia’s Afar portion has accused forces from neighbouring Tigray of crossing into its territory, seizing respective villages and attacking civilians, successful what it called a breach of the 2022 peace deal that ended the warfare successful bluish Ethiopia.

Between 2020 and 2022, Tigray was the centre of a devastating two-year war that pitted the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) against Ethiopia’s national service and near astatine slightest 600,000 radical dead, according to the African Union.

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In a connection released precocious connected Wednesday, Afar authorities said TPLF fighters “entered Afar territory by unit today”.

The group, which governs the Tigray region, was accused of “controlling six villages and bombing civilians with mortars”. Officials did not supply details connected casualties.

“The TPLF learns thing from its mistakes,” the Afar medication said, condemning what it described arsenic “acts of terror”.

The struggle earlier this decennary besides dispersed into neighbouring Ethiopian regions, including Afar, whose forces fought alongside national troops.

According to Afar’s latest statement, Tigrayan forces attacked the Megale territory successful the northwest of the portion “with dense weapons occurrence connected civilian herders”.

The authorities warned that if the TPLF “does not instantly cease its actions, the Afar Regional Administration volition presume its antiaircraft work to support itself against immoderate outer attack”.

The renewed fighting, they said, “openly destroys the Pretoria bid agreement”, referring to the woody signed successful November 2022 betwixt Ethiopia’s national authorities and Tigrayan leaders, which ended 2 years of bloodshed.

While the fragile bid had mostly held, tensions betwixt Addis Ababa and the TPLF person deepened successful caller months. The party, which dominated Ethiopian authorities from 1991 to 2018, was officially removed from the country’s database of governmental parties successful May amid interior divisions and increasing mistrust from the national government.

Federal officials person besides accused the TPLF of re-establishing ties with neighbouring Eritrea, a state with a agelong and uneasy past with Ethiopia. Eritrea, erstwhile an Italian colony and aboriginal an Ethiopian province, fought a bloody independency warfare earlier gaining statehood successful 1993.

A consequent borderline warfare betwixt the 2 nations from 1998 to 2000 killed tens of thousands. When Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed came to powerfulness successful 2018, helium signed a landmark bid woody with Eritrea, but relations person soured again since the extremity of the Tigray conflict.