- One person was killed in an airstrike in Tigray, Ethiopia.
- Violence broke out on August 24.
- UN investigators have accused Abia’s government of possible crimes against humanity in Tigray.
One person was killed on Friday in a fresh airstrike in Ethiopia’s rebel-held Tigray, the region’s biggest hospital said, ending a month of renewed clashes between pro-government forces and Tigrayan fighters.
The return to hostilities on August 24 derailed a March ceasefire and dashed hopes for a peaceful resolution to the nearly two-year war between Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).
Tigray’s authorities announced this month that they were ready to participate in African Union (AU)-brokered talks, removing a key obstacle to talks with Abia’s government.
READ | Chaos returns to Tigray when a mini-truce is broken
But fighting has only escalated in the weeks since airstrikes hit the northern region and Ethiopia’s ally Eritrea crossed the border to join the battle against its old enemy, the TPLF.
“There was a drone attack around 5:30 this morning. A 60-year-old man was killed,” Kybrom Gebreselassie, a senior official at Ayder Hospital in Tigray’s capital Mekele, told AFP.
The hospital said on Twitter:
One dead body arrived at Ayder Hospital after a drone attack in Mekele town around Desta Hotel.
Since the latest clashes, airstrikes have killed 17 people in Tigray, including a fatality on Friday, according to hospital officials.
The AFP could not independently verify the claims. Access to northern Ethiopia is severely restricted and Tigray has been under a communications blackout for over a year.
Since the war broke out in Africa’s second most populous country, countless civilians have been killed and serious violations of civilian rights have been documented on all sides.
On Monday, UN investigators accused Abia’s government of possible crimes against humanity in Tigray, including using famine as a weapon of war, by blocking aid to the region of six million.
Addis Ababa rejected a report by the Commission of Experts on Human Rights on Ethiopia with its permanent representative to the UN in Geneva, Zenebe Kebede, telling AFP that its findings were “contradictory and biased”.
The commission said it found evidence of massive violations on all sides.
The TPLF ruled Ethiopia for decades before Abiy came to power in 2018 and is considered a terrorist group by Addis Ababa.
Abiy, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, sent troops to Tigray in November 2020 to topple the TPLF in response to what he said were attacks on federal army camps.
But the TPLF recaptured most of Tigray in a surprise comeback in June 2021.
It then spread to neighboring Afar and Amhara regions before the fighting reached a stalemate.
