Rebel forces in Tigray launch new offensive

DEBARK - Tigrayan forces claimed yesterday to have launched a new offensive in the conflict-torn northern region of Ethiopia, two weeks after the federal government declared a unilateral ceasefire in the face of rebel advances.

A spokesman for the Tigrayan forces told AFP they had seized Alamata, the main town in southern Tigray, after launching their latest assault on Monday.

Getachew Reda said fighting was also taking place in western Tigray, an area where the United States has raised concerns about ethnic cleansing.

The rebel claims could not be independently confirmed because communications were largely down in the area, while an Ethiopian military spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Tigray Defence Forces last month swept across large parts of Tigray and seized the regional capital Mekele after eight months of brutal conflict with federal troops.

The fighting - marked by grisly massacres and widespread sexual violence - has killed thousands of people, while the United Nations says hundreds of thousands are on the brink of famine. Security forces and officials from the neighbouring Amhara region had moved in to both the southern and western areas of Tigray in November in support of the Ethiopian army, after Tigrayan forces cleared out during the early phase of the war.

“We promised to liberate every square inch of Tigray,” Getachew said.

“Yesterday (Monday) we launched an offensive in (the southern region of) Raya and were able to absolutely rout federal defence forces and Amhara special forces divisions,” he said.

“We have been able to secure most of southern Tigray including Korem and Alamata (the main town in the area)”.

Getachew said TDF fighters were still “in hot pursuit” of progovernment fighters, adding: “We don’t want to give them a chance to regroup.” A UN source reported Tuesday the sound of artillery fire near Emba Madre, a town in western Tigray, while to the south, aid workers reported hearing small arms fire near a refugee camp at Mai Aini.

Active fighting was also reported around Mai Tsebri, about 13 kilometres (eight miles) from Emba Madre.

A local government office in the Amhara region to the south of Tigray had called on Monday for a “mass mobilisation” of people with arms and food to go to Mai Tsebri. The rebel offensive was launched just two days after election results showed Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed had won by a landslide in a June election that went ahead despite the Tigray conflict that has battered his global reputation.

The TDF had described its seizure of Mekele and most of Tigray as a major victory and initially branded the government’s unilateral ceasefire a “joke.”

Rebel leaders later said they acceptedtheceasefire“inprinciple” but posed strict conditions, including the withdrawal from the region of Eritrean and Amhara forces. Abiy and other officials have countered that federal forces executed a strategic pullback to focus on other threats.

Abiy - who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for his peace deal with neighbouring Eritrea - sent the army into Tigray last November to oust the region’s once-dominant ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF)

Abiy had accused them of orchestrating attacks on Ethiopian military bases in Tigray, an important economic and industrial region in the Horn of Africa nation.

The war has badly damaged Abiy’s international standing, and Western powers have demanded that the ceasefire be accompanied by unfettered aid access into the desperate region where famine-like conditions have been reported.