Ethiopia’s Tigray region asserts that fighter jets have bombed locations around its capital, Mekele, aiming to force the region “into submission”, while Ethiopia’s army says it has been forced into an “unexpected and aimless war”.
The Tigray allegation was read out Thursday evening on the regional broadcaster. Ethiopia’s government has not commented on it. Earlier, Ethiopia mobilised for war in the northern Tigray region, dashing international hopes of averting a conflict between Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government and the powerful ethnic faction that led the ruling coalition for decades.
On Thursday, the deputy army chief said the “country has entered into unexpected war” after Ethiopia’s lower house of parliament approved unanimously a six-month state of emergency in the region which is ruled by the opposition Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).
“Our country has entered into a war that it did not want. This war is a shameful war. It does not have a point. The people of Tigray and its youth and its security forces should not die for this pointless war. Ethiopia is their country,” the deputy chief of the army, Birhanu Jula, said on state television, adding that troops were being mustered from around the country and dispatched to Tigray. The war will not come to the centre, it will end there.
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Source: aljazeera
