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Forces loyal to Ethiopia’s former rebel ruling party Tigray have entered the region’s capital, Mekelle, and dealt the hardest blow to the government in Addis Ababa since a terrible conflict November.
“We have taken on Mekelle,” said a member of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front, eight months after the start of a civil war that likely killed thousands, displaced millions and sparked fears of famine.
A Mekelle resident said “everyone is very happy, as the fighters control the city,” with people waving red and yellow Tigrian flags. But they added that within a radius of about 25km around the city “there is still war”.
Calls to officials from the Tigray interim administration, which was appointed by Addis Ababa, went unanswered, but eyewitnesses and reports said they had fled the Tigrayan capital.
Billene Seyoum, the spokeswoman for Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, made no comment on the Tigrinya troops taking Mekelle.
But he confirmed that the Ethiopian government on Monday declared “an unconditional humanitarian ceasefire.” International organizations have sounded the alarm hundreds of thousands living in conditions similar to famine.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres said Monday night after speaking with Abiy that he hoped “there would be an effective cessation of hostilities in Tigray.”
In recent weeks, diplomatic and humanitarian sources reported, forces loyal to the TPLF had reclaimed territory lost by Ethiopian federal forces.
Getachew Reda, a senior member of the TPLF, said on Sunday that “our forces are gaining more and more gains,” but their claims could not be verified. He told Reuters on Monday by satellite phone that Mekelle “is under our control.”
Fighting began in the northernmost region of Ethiopia, Tigray in early November after Abiy sent troops to expel the TPLF.
Government officials argue that he had no choice but to invade Tigray after troops loyal to the TPLF attacked the northern command of the federal army. Abiy had promised that the operation would quickly restore law and order, but the conflict has lasted. war this has provoked presumptions massacres, fueling a humanitarian crisis.
It has also attracted troops from neighboring Eritrea, whose capital Asmara has been hit by rebel rockets and whose strong leader, Isaias Afwerki, hates the TPLF. The conflict has horrified an international community that in 2019 awarded Abiy the Nobel Peace Prize.
The Addis Ababa government had called the TPLF, Tigray’s long-standing ruling party, a “criminal clique.” As a leading member of the four-party coalition that led Ethiopia for nearly three decades until 2018, when Abiy took office, the TPLF had played a decisive role in national politics.
Tigrayans have a long history of fighting Addis Ababa. They did so in the 1940s against Emperor Haile Selassie in the so-called Woyane Rebellion. Forty years later they led a successful guerrilla war against the Marxist regime of Derg, which came to power in 1991 after marching on Addis Ababa.
The unilateral declaration of a ceasefire followed several major military gains by fighters loyal to the TPLF, Risk consultancy Eurasia said in a note on Monday, adding that Tigrayan fighters “could reach an agreement temporary as it provides both with the opportunity to consolidate the wave of local support and strengthen their position in Mekelle and its surroundings ”.
He warned, however, that “while this opens the door to dialogue towards a more complete solution to the conflict, discussions are likely to be difficult and protracted.”
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