Addis Ababa’s denies peace talks are imminent hours after the African Union named special envoys to help mediate the ongoing crisis.
Ethiopia said on Saturday its forces seized another town in their advance on the capital of the northern Tigray region, Mekelle, and rebuffed an African Union push to mediate the conflict.
The government has said it will soon reach Mekelle after taking surrounding towns, the latest being Adigrat – the second-largest city in Tigray about 116km (72 miles) north of the capital.
No immediate response was available from the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) rebels who have promised “hell” for the advancing federal troops. The TPLF said on Friday its forces were making progress on the southern and northern fronts.
A federal government statement said on Friday that Ethiopian troops took the towns of Axum and Adwa.
Assertions on all sides are hard to verify because phone lines and internet have been down since the beginning of the conflict on November 4 and media are largely barred.
Ethiopia denied talks on the growing conflict in Tigray were imminent, just hours after three African former presidents were named to help mediate the two-week-old crisis.
Ethiopian troops are taking towns and advancing on Mekelle despite resistance from regional forces who have used bulldozers to plough up roads and are putting up resistance, the Addis Ababa government said.
A hint of the devastation can be seen in satellite images provided to the Reuters news agency by commercial space company Maxar Technologies. Destroyed buildings lined the main road in the town of Dansha, where the conflict broke out, the images showed.
Members of Ethiopian National Defense Force prepare to deploy near the border with Tigray [File: Tiksa Negeri/Reuters]Humanitarian crisis
Hundreds, possibly thousands of people have been killed, more than 30,000 refugees have fled into Sudan, and Tigrayan forces have fired rockets at Ethiopia’s Amhara region and the neighbouring nation of Eritrea.
The AU announced the appointment of former Presidents Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia, and Kgalema Motlanthe of South Africa as special envoys.
“The primary task of the special envoys is to engage all sides to the conflict with a view to ending hostilities, creating conditions for an inclusive national dialogue to resolve all issues that led to the conflict, and restoring peace and stability to Ethiopia,” the AU said in a statement.
The Ethiopian government has repeatedly said it will not engage in talks with the TPLF, which it regards as a renegade administration, pointing to what the government says was a surprise attack the group allegedly launched on federal troops in Dansha, sparking the conflict.
“News circulating that the envoys will be travelling to Ethiopia to mediate between the federal government and TPLF’s criminal element is fake,” a government task force on Tigray tweeted on Saturday.
200,000 refugees
On Friday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters Ethiopia was not interested in external mediation.
“Until now, there has not been acceptance by the Ethiopian authorities of any form of external mediation,” he said.
He also called for the opening of humanitarian corridors to assist civilians caught in fighting in the Tigray region.
The UN said it was making plans for as many as 200,000 refugees fleeing to neighbouring Sudan, itself suffering from a severe economic crisis. It now hosts some 36,000 Ethiopians, with many in transit camps near the border, according to Sudan’s refugee commission.
Many said they left behind modest lives as farmers with just the clothes on their backs to escape intense bombings, shootings and knife attacks in Tigray. Family members and relatives were left behind, their fate unknown, they said.
The TPLF is extremely popular in its home region and dominated national politics from 1991 until Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took power in 2018.
Source
:
Al Jazeera and News agencies
