Ethiopian forces have liberated a town in the northern Tigray region, the government’s emergency taskforce said late on Sunday, accusing local leaders of taking 10,000 prisoners from the town as they fled.
Tigray forces on Saturday fired rockets into neighboring Eritrea, escalating a 13-day conflict that has killed hundreds on both sides, and threatens to destabilize other parts of Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa.
“As the TPLF [Tigray People’s Liberation Front, Tigray’s ruling party] militia were defeated in Alamata, they fled taking along around 10,000 prisoners,” the government’s task force wrote on Twitter.
Photo: AFP
With access restricted and most communications down in Tigray, assertions from all sides could not be independently verified.
There was no immediate comment from Tigray’s leaders on the events in Alamata, a town near the border with Amhara regional state, about 120km from Tigray’s capital, Mekelle.
US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Tibor Nagy denounced the attacks by Tigrayan forces on Eritrea, calling them “efforts to internationalize the conflict” in Tigray.
TPLF Chairman Debretsion Gebremichael has accused Eritrea of sending tanks and thousands of troops into his region in support of the Ethiopian government’s offensive.
Eritrean Minister of Foreign Affairs Osman Saleh Mohammed last week said that his country was not involved in the conflict.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed launched the campaign in Tigray on Nov. 4 after accusing local forces of attacking federal troops based in the northern state, which borders Eritrea and Sudan and is home to 5 million people.
Fighting spread into Amhara, whose local forces are fighting with federal troops in Tigray.
Late on Friday, rockets were fired at two airports in Amhara in what the TPLF said was retaliation for government air strikes.
At least 20,000 Ethiopians have fled into Sudan, the UN said on Sunday.
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