Official says airstrike hit Tigray school

NAIROBI, Kenya — A university official said that the latest airstrike by Ethiopia’s military struck the school in the capital of the Tigray region and caused major damage. Meanwhile, the United States said that neither side in the conflict is heeding calls for de-escalation.

The official described Thursday’s airstrike in an email. It was not clear if anyone was killed or wounded in the airstrike in Mekele.

The AP is not naming the official because he or she could not be reached directly.

There was no comment from Ethiopia’s government, which has been fighting the Tigray regional forces since a Nov. 4 attack on a military base there. Both sides have carried out airstrikes. Each regards the other as illegal, the result of a falling-out between Nobel Peace Prize-winning Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and the Tigray leaders who once dominated the country’s ruling coalition.

No one knows how many people have been killed, and verifying either side’s claims is challenging.

“At this point, neither party, from what we hear, is interested in mediation,” the top U.S. diplomat to Africa, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State

Tibor Nagy, told reporters Thursday.

Nagy said of the airstrike: “From what you say, I certainly hope it’s not true.”

Alarmed by the potential for disaster, 17 U.S. senators urged Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a letter Thursday to engage Abiy directly to push for an immediate cease-fire.

Ethiopia’s government has said it is marching in a final push to Mekele, the Tigray capital, with the goal to arrest the ruling “clique” from the region’s Tigray People’s Liberation Front. The TPLF infuriated Abiy’s government when it objected to the pandemic-related postponement of national elections until next year.