Troops in Ethiopia’s Tigray will withdraw, vows Eritrea
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia - Eritrea has acknowledged its troops are participating in the war in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region but has vowed to pull them out amid mounting international pressure.
The first explicit admission of Eritrea’s role in the fighting came in a letter posted online on Friday night by the country’s information minister, written by its UN ambassador and addressed to the Security Council.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sent troops into Tigray in November to disarm and detain leaders of the region’s once dominant political party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).
For months the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments denied Eritreans were involved, contradicting testimony from residents, rights groups, aid workers, diplomats and even some Ethiopian civilian and military officials.
Abiy finally acknowledged the Eritreans’ presence in March while speaking to lawmakers, and vowed soon after that they would leave.
On Thursday UN aid chief Mark Lowcock told the Security Council that despite Abiy’s earlier promise, there had been no evidence of a withdrawal of Eritrean troops from the region.
Eritrea’s Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel said on Saturday that Asmara had summoned the UN’s resident coordinator in Eritrea and the local head of the UN humanitarian coordination office to protest ‘wayward practices and fallacious reports... on basis of opaque networks/affiliations with TPLF’.
Abiy declared victory in Tigray in late November after federal forces took the regional capital Mekele, but the TPLF vowed to fight on and fighting has continued.