Tigray forces promise a ‘warm welcome’
Face new offensive in Amhara region
NAIROBI, Kenya — Ethiopia’s spreading Tigray conflict faced a dangerous escalation Friday as an Amhara regional official said Amhara forces will launch an offensive on Saturday against Tigray forces who have entered the region and taken control of a town hosting a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
“This is the time for the Amhara people to crush the terrorist group,” Sema Tiruneh, the Amhara region’s head of peace and security, told the regional state-affiliated Amhara Media Corp. “Everyone should come forward and defend themselves.”
In response, Getachew Reda, spokesman for the Tigray forces, told The Associated Press that “we’ll extend a warm welcome.” The conflict threatens to destabilize Africa’s secondmost populous country, where thousands of people have already been killed in the nine-month war.
In a phone interview, Mr. Getachew said Tigray forces have crossed into the Amhara region, and the Afar region, in recent weeks in an attempt to break the blockade that Ethiopia’s government has imposed on Tigray. Hundreds of thousands of people face famine conditions, and the United Nations and United States this week sent high-level officials to Ethiopia to urge more access for aid.
“We have to deal with anyone who’s still shooting,” Mr. Getachew said. “If it takes marching to Addis to silence the guns, we will. But I hope we’ll not have to.” Civilians shouldn’t fear, he said in response to allegations by ethnic Amhara that the Tigray forces have carried out attacks.
“We’re not after Amhara territory or the people of Amhara. ... As long as they are not shooting at our people, we have no problem,” Mr. Getachew said.
Separately, Ethiopia’s foreign ministry warned that the incursion into Amhara and Afar “is testing the federal government’s patience and pushing it to change its defensive mood which has been taken for the sake of the unilateral humanitarian cease-fire” currently in effect. The incursions have displaced some 300,000 people, it said.
Ethiopia could “deploy the entire defensive capability of the state” if overtures for a peaceful resolution to the conflict are not reciprocated, the statement said. The prime minister donated blood this week for the military and urged Ethiopians to do the same, following on military recruitment rallies in the capital.
Ethiopia declared the cease-fire in late June during a stunning turn in the war, as its military retreated from Tigray and the resurgent Tigray forces retook key towns and walked into the regional capital, Mekele, to cheers. The conflict erupted in Tigray in November after a falling-out between Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and the Tigray ruling party that had dominated Ethiopia’s government for nearly three decades. Since then, thousands of people have been killed.
The Tigray forces have vowed to secure the region and pursue its “enemies.” They said the prime minister needs to go as one of several preconditions for talks.
“I personally would want him to go, but it’s not for us to topple him,” the Tigray forces’ spokesman said of the prime minister. “We’re not interested in occupying the corridors of power in Addis.”