‘I didn’t expect to make it’ victorious rebel leader says

The convoy sped down from the mountain. As it descended toward the regional capital of Tigray, people clustered along the route in celebration.

Women stood ululating outside stone farmhouses, and fighters perched atop a ridge fired their weapons into the air as the vehicles curled around the detritus of battle: burned-out tanks, overturned trucks and a mucky field where an Ethiopian military cargo plane, shot down.

Tigray’s leader, Debretsion Gebremichael, was going home.

Two days earlier, his scrappy guerrilla force had retaken the regional capital,

Mekelle, in hell, and now they can hours after breathe again.” Ethiopian Debretsion offered a rebel-side account of the troops conflict that has plunged suddenly Ethiopia into chaos since abandoned Nov. 4, when Prime Minister the Abiy Ahmed ordered city. Now a military operation there. Debretsion, The civil war has led to a former the displacement of nearly deputy prime minister 2 million people, and to of Ethiopia, was leaving widespread hunger and reports the mountains where that civilians were he had been ensconced for subjected to atrocities and eight months leading a war sexual violence. to reestablish his rule over Debretsion, who is believed the region. to be in his late 50s,

“I didn’t expect to make claimed to have crippled it back alive,” Debretsion Ethiopia’s powerful army, said Thursday night in an defeating seven of its 12 divisions interview, his first since the and killing at least fall of Mekelle. But this isn’t 18,000 soldiers. personal. The most important He also detailed plans to thing is that my people expand the war across Tigray are free free from the until all outside forces invaders. They were living are exoelled.

Debretsion Gebremichael