Ethiopia’s Tigray region bombs two airports

Attack on neighbour raises fears of civil war, genocide in country

NAIROBI, KENYA— Ethiopia’s defiant Tigray regional government said Saturday it fired rockets at two airports in the neighbouring Amhara region as a deadly conflict threatens to spread into other parts of Africa’s second-most populous country.

The Tigray regional government said in a statement on Tigray TV that such strikes would continue “unless the attacks against us stop.” Ethiopia’s federal government said the airports in Gondar and Bahir Dar were damaged in the strikes late Friday, asserting that Tigray regional forces were “repairing and utilizing the last of the weaponry within its arsenals.”

Fighting that erupted in the northern Tigray region on Nov. 4 has reportedly killed hundreds on both the federal government and regional government sides, sent well over 17,000 refugees fleeing into neighbouring Sudan and raised international alarm about a possible civil war at the heart of the Horn of Africa.

The Tigray regional government, which once dominated the country’s ruling coalition, broke away last year and the federal government says members of the region’s ruling “clique” now must be arrested and their well-stocked arsenal destroyed.

Fears of ethnic targeting are rising. In a statement, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, which governs the region, denied allegations that scores or even hundreds of civilians were “hacked to death” Monday in the town of Mai-Kadra. The massacre was confirmed by Amnesty International, which cited a man helping to clear away bodies as saying many of the dead were ethnic Amharas.

The UN office on genocide prevention has condemned reports of ”targeted attacks against civilians based on their ethnicity or religion” in Ethiopia, warning the rhetoric sets a “dangerous trajectory that heightens the risk of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.”