Tigray hit by drone after truce offer

ETHIOPIA’S northern region of Tigray was hit by an air strike yesterday local officials said, two days after rebel authorities there said they were ready for a ceasefire.

The reported drone strike on the regional capital Mekele left at least one person injured, said Kibrom Gebreselassie, a senior official at Ayder Referral Hospital, the biggest in Tigray.

The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which has been at war with Ethiopia’s army and its allies for nearly two years, said a military drone “bombed” Mekele University in the early hours of yesterday, causing injuries and property damage.

Dimtsi Weyane, a TPLF-affiliated TV network broadcasting in Tigray, said its station was also hit, forcing it off air and “causing heavy human and material damage”.

Tigray has been hit by several air strikes since fighting resumed in late August between government forces and their allies and TPLF rebels. The return to combat shattered a March truce that had paused the worst of the bloodshed, and dashed hopes of peacefully resolving the war.

The fresh offensives have also drawn in Eritrean troops and cut off aid deliveries into Tigray, where the UN says a lack of food, fuel and medicine is causing a humanitarian disaster.

Both sides have accused the other of firing first, and fighting has spread from southern Tigray to other fronts farther north and west. On Sunday, the TPLF said it was ready for a ceasefire and would accept a peace process led by the AU, removing an obstacle to talks for Ethiopia Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government.