Breakaway chief threatens more missile attacks
NAIROBI, Kenya — The leader of Ethiopia’s rebellious Tigray region has confirmed firing missiles at neighboring Eritrea’s capital and is threatening more, marking a major escalation as the deadly fighting in northern Ethiopia between Tigray forces and the federal government spills across an international border.
Tigray regional President Debretsion Gebremichael, in a phone interview Sunday with the Associated Press, would not say how many missiles were fired at the city of Asmara on Saturday but said it was the only city in Eritrea that was targeted.
“As long as troops are here fighting, we will take any legitimate military target and we will fire,” he said, accusing Eritrea of sending troops into the Tigray region and denying reports that Tigray regional forces have entered Eritrea.
The brewing civil war in Ethiopia between a regional government that once dominated the country’s ruling coalition, and a Nobel Peace Prizewinning prime minister whose sweeping reforms marginalized the Tigray region’s power, could fracture a key U. S. security ally and destabilize the strategic Horn of Africa, with the potential to send waves of refugees into Sudan.
In a separate, bloody example of Ethiopia’s growing tensions, at least 34 people were killed in a “gruesome attack” on a passenger bus in the western Benishangul-Gumuz Region on Friday night, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission said, and “there are reports of similar attacks” in other parts of that region. The attackers were not clear.
At least three rockets appeared to be aimed at the airport in Asmara, hours after the Tigray regional government warned it might attack. It accuses Eritrea of attacking at the invitation of Ethiopia’s government after the conflict in the Tigray region erupted on Nov. 4 with an assault by regional forces on a federal military base there.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in a statement declared that
“Ethiopia is more than capable of attaining the objectives of the operation by itself.”
The Tigray leader said he had no communication with Ethiopia’s federal government. The African Union is pushing for a ceasefire, he said, “but the prime minister is not ready to listen. He believes in the might he has.”
Tigray’s heavily armed regional government broke away from Ethiopia’s ruling coalition last year, and it objects to the postponement of national elections until next year, which extends Abiy’s rule. In September it held a regional election in defiance.
Each side regards the other as illegal, and the federal government says the Tigray region’s leaders must be arrested and their arsenal destroyed. Abiy calls it a “law enforcement action” while his military officials call it war.
The United Nations and others have warned of a looming humanitarian disaster in the growing conflict as some 25,000 Ethiopian refugees, hungry and scared, have fled the Tigray region into Sudan. The refugees — roughly half of them children — huddled in makeshift tents of sheets, even umbrellas, as authorities rushed to organize assistance in the remote area and more arrivals were on the way.