Risk of civil war in Ethiopia rises as Tigray hit with air strikes
▶ The PM told civilians in the region to avoid ‘collateral damage’ by not gathering outside
Ethiopian jets bombed the Tigray region of the country on Friday and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed pledged more air strikes in the escalating conflict as Tigrayan forces reportedly seized control of federal military sites and weapons.
Civilians in the northern state should avoid “collateral damage” by not gathering outside because strikes would continue, Mr Abiy said on Friday evening in a televised speech, defying international pleas to both sides for restraint.
The developments were a sign of the speed with which the days-old conflict was hurtling towards civil war in the country of 110 million people.
A row between Mr Abiy’s federal government and his former Tigrayan allies exploded on Wednesday after Mr Abiy ordered a military campaign.
Mr Abiy, who won last year’s Nobel Peace Prize, accused the Tigray People’s Liberation Front of attacking a federal military base and trying to steal equipment. He said “the last red line” had been crossed.
The government then cut phone and internet communications to the region, reported the digital rights group Access Now, making it impossible to verify official accounts. The government accused the TPLF of shutting down communications.
Diplomats, regional security officers and aid workers told Reuters that fighting was spreading in the north-western part of the country, along Tigray’s border with the Amhara region, which is backing the federal government, and near Ethiopia’s borders with Sudan and Eritrea.
Mr Abiy said on Friday that government troops had seized
control of the town of Dansha, near the border, from the TPLF.
After toppling the Marxist dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1991, the TPLF led the country’s multi-ethnic ruling coalition until Mr Abiy took office in 2018. For that period, Tigrayans dominated the military.
Mr Abiy has sacked many senior generals as part of a crackdown on past rights abuses and corruption.
Tigrayans says they are its targets and that this is unfair.
Tigrayan forces are battle- hardened and possess significant stocks of military hardware, experts say. Their regional troops and associated militias number up to 250,000 men, says the International Crisis Group think tank.
One of the biggest risks is that the Ethiopian army will splinter along ethnic lines, with Tigrayans defecting to the regional force. There are indications this is already happening, experts said.
Tigrayan forces had control of the federal military’s Northern Command headquarters in the city of Mekelle, a UN internal security report released on Friday said.
The Northern Command controls the border with Sudan, Djibouti and Eritrea.
Tigrayan forces seized heavy weapons from several of the
command’s depots, the report read. It said the command contains “most of the military’s heavy weapons including the majority of the country’s mechanised and armoured units, artillery and air assets”.
The government is mobilising troops from around the country and sending them to Tigray, at the risk of creating a security vacuum elsewhere. More than 50 people were killed by gunmen from a rival ethnic group in western Ethiopia last Sunday, Amnesty International said.
Sending troops from the border with Somalia will make that area more vulnerable to incursions by Al Shabab, the Al Qaeda-linked insurgency trying to overthrow the government in Somalia, the UN report read.
One of the biggest fears is that the army will splinter along ethnic lines, with Tigrayans defecting to the regional force