Two airports in Ethiopia’s Amhara state, which neighbours Tigray where federal troops are fighting local forces, were targeted by rocket fire late on Friday, the government said, as an 11-day conflict widened.
The airport in Gondar in Amhara state was hit on Friday, while another rocket aimed at the Bahir Dar airport missed the target, the government said.
The ruling Tigray party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), said that the Tigray Defence Forces conducted missile strikes in military bases in Bahir Dar and Gondar in retaliation for air strikes conducted by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s forces in various parts of the state.
“Yesterday evening we’ve inflicted heavy damage on the military components of the Gondar and Bahir Dar airports,” Getachew Reda, a spokesperson for the TPLF, said in a statement on the Facebook page of the Tigray state’s communications office. “As long as the attacks on the people of Tigray do not stop, the attacks will intensify.”
He reiterated claims by the TPLF that Eritrean soldiers are involved in the fighting, which Ethiopia denies.
Getachew said the TPLF would not hesitate to strike locations inside Eritrea – Ethiopia’s traditional foe – including its capital, Asmara.
“Whether they lift from Asmara or Bahir Dar to attack Tigray ... we will commit retaliatory measures. We will undertake missile attacks on selected targets in addition to the airports,” Getachew said. “We will conduct missile attacks to foil military movements in Massawa and Asmara.”
Ethiopia and Eritrea fought a brutal border war from 1998-2000 that left tens of thousands dead.
Abiy won last year’s Nobel Peace Prize in large part for taking steps to end the nearly two-decade stalemate that followed.
He announced last week that he had ordered military operations in Tigray, saying that the move came in response to attacks on federal military camps by the TPLF.
Hundreds of people have been killed.
The prime minister has said that government warplanes were bombing military targets in Tigray, including arms depots and equipment controlled by the Tigrayan forces.
The government says its military operations are aimed at restoring the rule of law in the mountainous state of 5mn people.
One of the rockets hit the airport in Gondar and partially damaged it, said Awoke Worku, spokesperson for Gondar central zone, while a second missile fired simultaneously landed just outside of the airport at Bahir Dar.
“The TPLF junta is utilising the last of the weaponry within its arsenals,” the Ethiopian government’s emergency task force wrote on Twitter.
The Amhara regional state’s forces have been fighting alongside their federal counterparts against Tigray’s fighters.
Yohannes Ayele, a resident of Gondar, said he heard a loud explosion in the Azezo neighbourhood of the city at 10.30pm.
Another resident of the area said the rocket had damaged the airport terminal building.
The area was sealed off and firefighting vehicles were parked outside, the resident added.
An Ethiopian Airlines worker who did not wish to be identified said flights to both Gondar and Bahir Dar airports had been cancelled after the attacks.
The United Nations, the African Union and others are concerned that the fighting could spread to other parts of Ethiopia, Africa’s second most populous country, and destabilise the wider Horn of Africa region.
More than 14,500 people have fled into neighbouring Sudan, with the speed of new arrivals “overwhelming the current capacity to provide aid”, the UN refugee agency said on Friday.
Ethiopia’s Human Rights Commission, appointed by the government but independent, said it was sending investigators to the town of Mai Kadra in Tigray, where Amnesty International this week reported what it said was evidence of mass killings.
Amnesty International said on Thursday that possibly hundreds of civilians were stabbed and hacked to death in the region on November 9, citing witnesses.
It said it had not been able to independently confirm who was responsible, but said the witnesses had blamed fighters loyal to Tigray’s local leaders.
The Tigray state government denied involvement in the reported killings.
“TPLF absolutely refutes allegations the TPLF members and the Tigray special police force were involved in this most tragic event,” it said in a statement.
The rights commission said in a statement it would investigate all allegations of human rights violations in the conflict.
Abiy’s government has said the TPLF needs to be disarmed before negotiations can begin, frustrating world leaders who are calling for an immediate cessation of hostilities.
Abiy on Friday declared the TPLF was in the “throes of death”, but the party has vowed to fight on.
A communications blackout in the region has made it difficult to assess competing claims about how the fighting is going.
Military officials have vowed to keep the conflict contained in Tigray, and Abiy has repeatedly promised a quick, decisive victory.
But Amhara and Tigray are embroiled in long-running disputes over land along their shared border that analysts worry could draw Amhara into the conflict.
Thousands of Amhara militiamen have already headed towards Tigray to fight alongside federal forces, according to Amhara security officials.
Humanitarian workers warn Tigray is facing a major crisis.
“We can’t reach the people we need to provide services to,” Catherine Sozi, the UN’s resident and humanitarian co-ordinator in Ethiopia, told AFP on Friday, citing the communications blackout, road closures, and shortages of water, fuel and cash. “We’re concerned that every hour, every day that the conflict continues, the most vulnerable people become even more vulnerable.”
The UN is lobbying Abiy’s government for full humanitarian access.
The TPLF dominated Ethiopian politics for nearly three decades before Abiy took office in 2018 on the back of several years of anti-government protests.
Since then, the TPLF has complained of being sidelined and scapegoated for the country’s woes.
The feud grew more bitter after Tigray went ahead with its own elections in September – defying a nationwide ban on all polls imposed because of the coronavirus pandemic – and tried to brand Abiy an illegitimate ruler.
Ethiopians who fled the ongoing fighting in Tigray region prepare to cross the Setit River on the Sudan-Ethiopia border, near Hamdait village in Sudan’s eastern Kassala state.
