Tigray forces fire rockets into neighboring region of Ethiopia

Rebel forces from Ethiopia’s Tigray region fired rockets on Friday at the distant capital of the neighboring Amhara region, Amhara authorities said, raising worries the conflict could spill into a wider war.

Two weeks into the conflict, the UN said it was making plans for as many as 200,000 refugees fleeing into neighboring Sudan, and made an urgent appeal for $200 million to assist them. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people have been killed and tens of thousands of refugees have fled from fighting in Tigray, raising questions of whether Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed can hold his ethnically diverse nation together.

“The illegal TPLF group have launched a rocket attack around 1:40 a.m. in Bahir Dar,” the Amhara government’s communications office said, referring to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. The rockets caused no damage, it said.

Bahir Dar, Amhara region’s lakeside capital, is located hundreds of miles from the fighting in Tigray. Tigrayan refugees have told Reuters the Amhara militia is fighting on the government side, and the two regions have a border dispute.

A local journalist and another resident in Bahir Dar said they heard two explosions and had been told by people in the area that at least one missile hit near the airport.

Aid agencies fear a humanitarian emergency in Tigray, where hundreds of thousands of people depended on relief aid even before the conflict. Thousands of refugees have fled, some crowding into boats to cross a river to Sudan, overwhelming aid groups positioned on the other side. “Together with all the agencies we have built a response plan for about 20,000 people and currently we are at about 31,000 so it has already surpassed that figure,” UN refugee agency’s ( UNHCR) Axel Bisschop told a briefing in Geneva. “The new planning figure is around 200,000.”