A new air strike overnight Tuesday-Wednesday targeted the city of Mikkeli, the capital of the Tigray region in northern Ethiopia, said the Tigray People's Liberation Front and an official at a local hospital.
"A night-time drone strike targeted Mikkeli," the front's spokesman, Getachew Reda, said in a tweet on his account on the microblogging site, stressing that "there are no military targets" at the targeted location.
In turn, Doctor Kiprom Gebrselassie, head of the main hospital in Mikkeli, confirmed in a tweet on Twitter that "a drone strike in Mikkeli, around midnight" led to "victims who were taken to the hospital", without specifying their number, according to the French Press Agency.
After a five-month truce, battles resumed on August 24 between the Federal Army and the Tigray Front, with the two sides trading accusations of igniting confrontations.
Mikkeli was subjected to an Ethiopian raid last Friday, targeting a kindergarten, killing 17 people and injuring a number of people.
The front announced on Tuesday that it is still open to negotiations with the federal government, but at the same time it is determined to continue its advances in northern Ethiopia as long as the government's military reinforcements constitute a "threat" to their region.
Diplomatic and humanitarian sources and eyewitnesses reported that the Tigray Front had advanced in recent days about fifty kilometers south of the Tigray border, within the neighboring Amhara region, as well as southeast of the Afar region.
In mid-2021, the front regained control of the majority of the region after a counter-attack on the government forces, which made them approach the capital, Addis Ababa.
Yesterday, Tuesday, the Sudanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the Ethiopian ambassador in Khartoum, Yeptal Amiru.
The Director General of African Affairs, Fadl Abdullah Fadl, conveyed to the Ethiopian ambassador the ministry’s denunciation of statements made to the media, in which he mentioned that the Ethiopian forces had shot down a plane loaded with weapons for the forces of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, which violated the Ethiopian airspace through Sudan, according to the official Sudanese news agency “SUNA”.
Ambassador Fadl explained to the Ethiopian ambassador that making these unfounded allegations violates the usual diplomatic traditions in communicating with the official authorities in the country of representation, especially as the leadership in the two countries seeks to strengthen relations between them.
It is noteworthy that the Tigray conflict began in November 2020, when Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sent federal forces to the region to control the local authorities emanating from the Tigray People’s Liberation Front after they were accused of attacking an army barracks, and the conflict resulted in the deaths of thousands of people and plunged northern Ethiopia into a serious humanitarian crisis.
The Source
- Agencies