The Ethiopian government has assured Friday that the army controls 70 percent of the Tigray region, located in the north of the country and the scene of an armed conflict since November 2020 with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).
Redwan Hussien, National Security Advisor to Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, explained via Twitter that the Army controls a large part of the northern region of Tigray, following the cessation of hostilities agreement reached last week with the TPLF, which has not commented on this claim.
In this regard, Hussien has reported that «aid is flowing as never before, even in areas not yet in the hands of the ENDF».
«The (peace) agreement only offers opportunities to improve services,» he asserted, after indicating that more than thirty trucks of food and three trucks of medicines have arrived in the region. «There is no obstacle in terms of aid,» he added. In addition, he added that services are being reconnected, while flights are operational again.
For its part, the Bureau of African Affairs of the U.S. State Department has indicated that Hussien himself said in the framework of the talks in Kenya that the aid could be delivered «without restrictions» by «the end of this week».
«Vulnerable Ethiopians in Tigray, Afar and Amhara need help now, as well as restoration of services, protection of civilians and accountability for human rights violations,» he said in a message on his Twitter account.
In this regard, he stressed that the United States «is urgently awaiting measures that respect and implement the agreement (cessation of hostilities reached in South Africa between the Ethiopian government and the TPLF)».
In this context, Kindeya Gebrehiwot, one of the members of the Foreign Service of the TPLF, denounced that Eritrean troops are committing «killings, kidnappings and artillery attacks» around the towns of Shire and Adi Daero, in Tigray.
«There is a crowd of Eritrean civilians, including women, on a looting mission, as seen in Shire. After curfew, they do all sorts of mischief in the dark despite the signing of the cessation of hostilities agreement,» he has said on Twitter.
Earlier on Wednesday, Selamawit Kasa, a spokeswoman for the Ethiopian government’s Federal Communications Service, said the agreement with the TPLF has enabled the launch of «humanitarian support» and «reconstruction» work in the Tigray region.
On Monday, contacts began in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, between senior military officials of the army and the TPLF to discuss the cessation of hostilities agreed last week, as confirmed by the African Union (AU), which is carrying out mediation work.
The conflict in Tigray erupted in November 2020 following a TPLF attack on the army’s main base in Mekelle, after which the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed ordered an offensive against the group following months of political and administrative tensions, including the TPLF’s refusal to recognize an election postponement and its decision to hold regional elections outside Addis Ababa.
The TPLF accuses Abiy of whipping up tensions since coming to power in April 2018, when he became the first Oromo to accede to office. Until then, the TPLF had been the dominant force within Ethiopia’s ruling coalition since 1991, the ethnically-supported Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). The group opposed Abiy’s reforms, which it saw as an attempt to undermine its influence.
