The capital of the Ethiopian region of Tigray was hit by an airstrike at about midnight on Tuesday, Tigray rebels and hospital officials said, the latest such attack reported in just a few days.
The bombings came after a resumption of fighting on the ground between government forces and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) last week.
The renewed clashes have shattered a five-month-old truce and cast a pall over efforts to try to end the nearly two-year conflict in the north of Africa’s second-most populous country.
Photo: AFP
“Night time drone attack in Mekele. No conceivable military targets!” Tigray People’s Liberation Front spokesman Getachew Reda wrote on Twitter. “Mekele Hospital among the targets and at least three bombs dropped.”
Kibrom Gebreselassie, chief clinical director at Mekele’s Ayder Referral Hospital, wrote on Twitter there had been a drone attack “close to midnight” near Mekele general hospital.
“Casualties are arriving to Ayder Hospital,” Gebreselassie wrote, without giving details.
Ethiopian government officials were not immediately reachable for comment.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front have each blamed the other for the fighting that erupted on Wednesday last week in areas bordering the southeastern tip of Tigray.
At least four people, including children, were killed on Friday in the first airstrike on Mekele in many months, an attack condemned by UNICEF.
Local channel Tigrai TV had put the death toll at seven, including three children.
Tigrayan rebels had accused the government of hitting a residential area and a kindergarten.
Addis Ababa said that only military sites were targeted and accused the Tigray People’s Liberation Front of “dumping fake body bags in civilian areas” to manufacture outrage.
“We are fighting a defensive war,” Getachew said earlier on Tuesday at a news conference broadcast online, adding: “We will remain open for any negotiations.”
Residents, as well as diplomatic and humanitarian sources, have said that in the past few days Tigray People’s Liberation Front fighters have pushed about 50km south from Tigray into Amhara and to the southeast into Afar, sending many people fleeing.
“We have defended our positions and we are now launching a counteroffensive,” Getachew said. “Abiy keeps making miscalculation after miscalculation, he keeps sending reinforcements, and we’ll continue to neutralize [them], and that will take us probably deeper and deeper into Amhara region.”
Abiy’s government on Saturday last week announced that federal forces had pulled back from Kobo, which is about 15km south of Tigray, to avoid “mass casualties.”
Getachew on Tuesday said that a significant part of the North Wollo zone in Amhara was in rebel hands, although the Tigray People’s Liberation Front did not want to control the area.
In response, the Government Communication Service said: “The federal government is still committed to the peaceful resolution to the conflict that was once again initiated by the TPLF terrorist group.”
A local non-governmental organization active in Afar, the APDA, wrote on Twitter that about 18,000 people had been displaced by fighting, mainly women and children, and that roads in one area were “clogged with fleeing people.”
The Tigray People’s Liberation Front was apparently advancing toward Keliwan, a town in Afar to the east of Kobo, and that people were evacuating, the APDA said.
The war, which erupted in November 2020, has killed untold numbers of civilians and left millions in need of humanitarian aid across the north.
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