Fighting continues despite victory claim
A senior adviser to Tigray’s leader has urged young people and others in the region to ‘‘rise and deploy to battle in tens of thousands’’, after Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed declared victory in a power struggle that exploded between his government and the heavily armed regional one that once dominated Ethiopia’s ruling coalition.
In an interview with Tigray TV, Getachew Reda, an official with the fugitive regional government, said several thousand combatants had been killed in the embattled region in a month of fighting between Ethiopian and Tigrayan forces, although the claim was difficult to verify.
The fighting continues in some areas, and with the leaders of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) on the run in rugged territory, fears remain of a drawn-out conflict in the region of 6 million people.
‘‘ Our capacity to resist ultimately depends on the support we get from our people,’’ Getachew said. ‘‘It is possible to have the scenario where we stop everything and turn all the people into soldiers.’’
He didn’t say how many people were actively fighting, but said ‘‘our army is doing amazing things with limited numbers’’.
Getachew also claimed that there had been tens of thousands of deaths among Ethiopian forces and those from neighbouring Eritrea, which the TPLF insists is also involved. Ethiopia’s government denies this.
Ethiopian forces this week announced that they had gained ‘‘ full control’’ of Tigray’s capital, Mekele, a city of half a million people. Getachew said the TPLF had made a ‘‘strategic withdrawal’’ from the city to minimise destruction.
International patience is wearing thin as Abiy’s government resists dialogue with the regional government, which it regards as illegal, and as hunger grows in the cut-off Tigray region.
‘‘This has been going on for too long,’’ Janez Lenarcic, the European Union commissioner for crisis management, said yesterday while visiting Ethiopian refugees who have fled into Sudan. ‘‘ There will be no military solution to this issue, which is primarily a political one.’’
It is not clear how many people were killed as Ethiopian forces moved in on Mekele, but the International Committee of the Red Cross said the city’s largest hospital had run out of body bags, and staff had suspended other services to focus on the wounded.
Among the dead are at least five humanitarian workers, but few details have been released. The UN says more than 100 aid workers are reportedly still unaccounted for.
The UN and Ethiopia’s government have signed a deal to allow unimpeded aid access, at least to parts of Tigray now under federal government control. But that access has not yet begun.
An estimated 1 million people have been displaced, including more than 47,000 who have fled into Sudan. Also, the fate of some 96,000 refugees from Eritrea who had been sheltering in camps close to the Eritrean border is still unknown.