Ethiopian refugee arrivals reach 36,000: Sudan

SUDAN: The number of Ethiopians to have fled to Sudan from the deadly Tigray conflict has reached 36,000, Sudan’s refugee commission said on Wednesday, as fighting rages across the border.

“The total number of refugees to have arrived in Sudan has reached 36,000,” commission head Abdulla Soliman said, adding a new camp would be built at Um Tinetba in Sudan’s Gedaref state to cope with the influx.

Soliman said teams of humanitarian workers had been dispatched to Gedaref to establish the new refugee camp.

He also said the commission was holding talks with Sudan’s eastern states, such as Kassala, to seek plots of land on which to set up more camps.

“If the situation keeps geting worse, then we will have to open camps in Gezira and Sennar states,” the commission chief added.

Both sides in Ethiopia’s raging internal conflict claimed military successes on Wednesday, creating a muddied picture of fighting even as the government promised it would soon be over.

A communications blackout in Tigray, where Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed ordered military operations on Nov.4, has made it hard to get a clear view of hostilities now entering their third week.

“We’re inflicting heavy defeats on all fronts against the forces that came to atack us,” Tigrayan leader Debretsion Gebremichael said in a statement, referring to federal forces.

“I call upon all the Tigrayan people to go out en masse to drive out the invaders,” he added.

But army chief Berhanu Jula said his forces were “winning on all fronts” and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) was “in a state of desperation.”

“The TPLF’S plan to drag Ethiopia into civil war and tear it apart has failed. It is currently in a desperate mode as it is surrounded,” Berhanu said.

The federal police late Wednesday announced arrest warrants for 76 army officers, some retired, accused of conspiring with the TPLF and “commiting treason.”