Ethiopia captures disputed region
NAIROBI, Kenya — Ethiopia’s military has gained “full control” of the capital of the defiant Tigray region, the army announced Saturday, after the Tigray government reported that the city of a half-million people was being “heavily bombarded” in the final push to arrest the region’s leaders.
“God bless Ethiopia and its people!” Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said in a statement declaring that the taking of Mekele marked the “completion” of the military offensive that started nearly four weeks ago. “We have entered Mekele without innocent civilians being targets, “he said.
Now, he said, police will pursue the arrest of the leaders of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, who run the region and dominated Ethiopia’s ruling coalition before Abiy came to power in 2018 and sidelined them among the sweeping reforms that won him the Nobel Peace Prize.
Abiy’s government has since accused the TPLF of inciting unrest in the country and seeking to reclaim power, and each government regards the other as illegal. Abiy has rejected dialogue with the TPLF leaders over the past month, including during a Friday meeting with three African Union special envoys.
The fighting has threatened to destabilize Ethiopia and its neighbors.
As international alarm has grown since the conflict began on Nov. 4, so has a massive humanitarian crisis. The Tigray region of 6 million people has been cut off from the world as the military pursued what Abiy called a “law enforcement operation” with airstrikes and tanks.
Food, fuel, cash and medical supplies have run desperately low. Humanitarians and human rights groups said several hundred people have been killed. Nearly 1 million people have been displaced, including more than 40,000 who fled into Sudan. Camps home to 96,000 Eritrean refugees in Tigray have been in the line of fire.
With communications severed, it is difficult to verify claims by the warring sides.
The shelling that began earlier Saturday in Mekele, a densely populated city, immediately raised concerns about civilian casualties. Ethiopia’s government had warned Mekele residents there would be “no mercy” if they didn’t move away from the TPLF leaders in time. The United Nations said some residents fled as tanks closed in and Abiy’s 72-hour ultimatum for TPLF leaders to surrender expired.