Aug. 31 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The spokesman for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Tigray (TPLF), Getachew Reda, denounced on Wednesday new bombings by the Ethiopian Air Force on civilian targets, including a hospital, in the region’s capital, Mekelle.
Reda has reported through his Twitter profile that at least three bombs would have fallen on Mekelle during the night. “There are no conceivable military targets! Mekelle Hospital is among the targets,” she has denounced.
“Abiy Ahmed, doing what he knows how to do best: killing children and innocent civilians,” Reda said of the Ethiopian prime minister, whom he accused of trying to “internationalize” the conflict by sending “tens of thousands” of troops to Eritrea and thus “get all the support he can to carry out his designed genocide against the people of Tigray”.
“Those in the international community who are still under the illusion that it is only Isaias (Afwerki, president of Eritrea) and not Abiy who stands in the way of peace are only promoting dangerous assumptions,” Reda said.
Last week the TPLF denounced another series of attacks, this time the bombardments fell on a kindergarten and a residential area, also in Mekelle. The United Nations confirmed several deaths, including those of some children.
In recent weeks, the Ethiopian Armed Forces have resumed their operations in the northern part of the country, where the TPLF denounced the start of a “large-scale offensive”. The Air Force confirmed the shooting down of a plane that had entered from Sudan and was supposedly carrying weapons for the rebel group.
CONTEXT
The conflict in Ethiopia broke out in November 2020 after an attack by the TPLF against the main Army base, located in Mekelle, after which the Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, ordered an offensive against the group after months of political and administrative tensions. . A “humanitarian truce” is currently in force, although both sides have accused each other of preventing the delivery of aid.
The TPLF has accused Abiy of stirring up tensions since he came to power in April 2018, when he became the first Oromo to take office. Until then, the TPLF had been the dominant force within the ethnically based coalition that had governed Ethiopia since 1991, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). The group opposed Abiy’s reforms, seeing them as an attempt to undermine his influence.
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