About 2,500 Ethiopians escaped across the border with Sudan.
Refugees fled to Sudan on Tuesday and the African Union called for a ceasefire in an area of northern Ethiopia where Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is leading a military offensive against local leaders who challenge his authority.
About 2,500 Ethiopians have escaped across the border with Sudan after fighting in the turbulent Tigray region, with the exodus likely to swell rapidly, an official said.
Hundreds of people have died in airstrikes and fighting over fears Ethiopia could slide into civil war due to deep animosity between the Tigrayans and Abiy, who comes from the larger Oromo ethnic group.
With access to Tigray blocked and communications largely interrupted, it was difficult to ascertain the state of the conflict.
State media said federal forces captured Humera airport, near the borders with Sudan and Eritrea, as well as a road leading out of the city. The Ethiopian news agency published photos which it said showed federal soldiers, backed by forces in the neighboring Amhara region, at the airport.
However, the people of Humera were living their lives normally, according to a communications office of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which governs the state of more than 5 million people.
State-affiliated broadcaster FANA said Ethiopia had arrested 17 military officers for disrupting communication systems used by federal forces in Tigray, exposing them to potential damage.
Abiy, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, ordered airstrikes and sent troops to Tigray last week after accusing the TPLF of attacking a military base. Tigrayans say Abiy’s government oppresses and discriminates against them and behaves autocratically by postponing a national election.
Eritrea’s claim
In a potential major escalation, Tigray leader Debretsion Gebremichael said the Eritrean government of President Isaias Afwerki had sent troops across the border to attack local forces in support of the federal push.
But he gave no proof and Eritrean Foreign Minister Osman Saleh Mohammed denied it. “We are not part of the conflict,” he told Reuters.
Eritrea and Ethiopia signed a peace accord two years ago, but Afwerki’s government remains hostile to the Tigrayan leadership after its role in a devastating 1998-2000 war.
Reuters reporters traveling to Tigray and Amhara on Monday saw trucks full of militia fighters and vans with mounted machine guns rushing to the front line for the federal government.
Fighter jets bombarded weapons depots and other targets, both sides say, while aid workers and security sources reported heavy fighting on the ground.
Military and security sources in Amhara, on the side of federal troops, reported 500 dead on the Tigrayan side and hundreds also from the national army.
State-affiliated broadcaster Fana said federal troops killed 550 Tigrayan “extremists” while 29 other members of the local special forces and militias surrendered.
The AU bloc called for peace talks and an end to hostilities. But Ethiopia said mediation was only possible if the military materiel in Tigrayan’s hands was destroyed, federal officials were freed and regional leaders arrested.
Fears of war
Abiy, 44, is Africa’s youngest leader and won his Nobel Prize for democratic reforms and for making peace with Eritrea. But his anti-Tigray activism has alarmed diplomats and a full-scale war could still hurt an economy already shaken by the coronavirus crisis.
A former soldier who fought alongside the Tigrayans against Eritrea, Abiy took over in 2018 after a Tigrayan-led government dominated politics since rebels in their region overthrew the Marxist military regime in 1991.
But his attempts to open up a repressive political climate have also led to an explosion of ethnic problems, with hundreds killed and hundreds of thousands forced to flee their homes in clashes over the past two years.
Abiy believes he can militarily suppress the Tigrayan leadership, diplomats told Reuters, despite being a hardened group in the fight of the 1998-2000 war with Eritrea and the defeat of dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1991.
The TPLF forces and militia allies number up to 250,000 men and have significant equipment, experts say.
“Operations will cease as soon as the criminal junta is disarmed, the region’s legitimate administration reestablished, and fugitives apprehended and brought to justice – all quickly at hand,” Abiy tweeted on Tuesday.
The TPLF called it “ruthless” with airstrikes.
Redwan Hussein, spokesperson for a newly established state of emergency task force for the Tigray conflict, said federal soldiers were forced to retreat over the border with Eritrea before regrouping and returning to fight the local forces.
He admitted that Tigray troops controlled a powerful northern Ethiopian army command complex in Mekelle, the capital of Tigray.
