Leader of Tigray forces tells Ethiopian PM to ‘stop the madness’

The defiant leader of Ethiopia’s rebellious Tigray region has called on Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to “stop the madness” and withdraw troops from the region as he asserted that fighting continues “on every front”, two days after the government declared victory.

In a phone interview with The Associated Press on Monday, Debretsion Gebremichael, who heads the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), said he remains near the Tigray capital, Mekelle, which the Ethiopian army on Saturday said it now controlled.

Far from accepting Abiy’s declaration of victory, the Tigray leader said the fighting is not over and “we are sure we will win”. The fight is about the self-determination of the region of some six million people, the Tigrayan leader said, and it “will continue until the invaders are out”.

“I’m close to Mekelle in Tigray fighting the invaders,” Gebremichael told the Reuters news agency in a text message, a claim the government dismissed as a “deluded claim”.

Also on Monday, Abiy told parliament that federal troops had not killed a single civilian in their nearly month-long offensive against rebellious forces in the northern region.

Gebremichael also told Reuters that some Eritrean soldiers fighting alongside the Ethiopian federal forces had been taken prisoner by his side.

There was no immediate comment from the Eritrean government, though at the start of the more than three-week conflict it had denied involvement.

Claims from all sides are difficult to verify since phone and internet links to the Tigray region have been largely down and access tightly controlled since the war began on November 4.

On Sunday, a day after Abiy declared victory in the northern region, Tigray’s forces claimed they shot down a military plane and retook the town of Axum from federal forces.

Gebremichael told Reuters his forces also captured the pilot of the military plane. There was no immediate comment from the government or the military.

The Ethiopian government has been trying to quell a rebellion by the TPLF, a powerful ethnically based party that dominated the central government for nearly three decades until Abiy came to power in 2018.

Thousands of people are believed to have been killed since the fighting began, more than 43,000 have fled to neighboring Sudan, and there are reports of militias attacking civilians.

The conflict has been a difficult test for Abiy, a leader who pledged to unite the myriad ethnic groups that makeup Ethiopia’s 115 million population, but who has faced repeated bouts of violence across the country. The flow of refugees and rocket attacks by the TPLF on neighboring Eritrea also threaten to destabilize the wider Horn of Africa region.

Abiy, who has rebuffed international offers to mediate, said on Saturday evening that federal troops had taken control of the Tigrayan capital Mekelle, allaying fears of protracted fighting in the city of 500,000 people. He said federal police would try to arrest TPLF “criminals” and bring them to court.

Police then issued arrest warrants for 17 military officers on charges of treason and embezzlement of public properties, state-affiliated Fana TV reported. Arrest warrants already exist for 117 other senior officers with alleged ties to the TPLF.

Specter of armed war/b>

It was not clear if any TPLF leaders had surrendered or been apprehended since Saturday. Their whereabouts were also unknown.

On Sunday, Ethiopian state television said 70 graves, some holding individual and some multiple bodies, were found in the town of Humera in Tigray and quoted witnesses who claimed the victims were killed by pro-TPLF fighters.

The report could not be independently verified.

Human rights investigators and civilians fleeing the conflict say fighters from both sides, including civilian militias supporting more formal security forces, have carried out mass killings. Both the government and the TPLF deny their forces were involved.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said Mekelle was quiet on Sunday. But it said in a statement that hospitals were running low on supplies such as gloves to care for the wounded, and one hospital lacked body bags for the dead.

At Ayder Referral Hospital, one of the city’s biggest, the ICRC said it “found approximately 80 percent of patients to be suffering from trauma injuries,” without specifying how the injuries were sustained.

“The influx of wounded forced the hospital to suspend many other medical services so that limited staff and resources could be devoted to emergency medical care,” the ICRC added.

Attacks on Asmara

Regional diplomats and experts have also said a quick military victory in Mekelle might not mark the end of the conflict.

On Saturday, hours after Abiy announced Mekelle had fallen to federal forces, rockets were launched from Tigray hitting Asmara, the capital of neighboring Eritrea, two diplomats told the AFP news agency.

The rockets appeared to be aimed at Asmara’s airport and military installations, though it was unclear where they landed and what damage they might have caused.

The US embassy in Asmara reported that “six explosions” had occurred in the city “at about 10:13 pm” (19:13 GMT) on Saturday.

The TPLF has accused Eritrea of sending troops into Tigray in support of the Ethiopian government and said it fired rockets at Asmara on November 14.

The TPLF has a history of armed resistance. Tigray’s mountainous terrain and borders with Sudan and Eritrea helped the group during its long struggle against Marxist strongman Mengistu Haile Mariam, whom it eventually toppled in 1991.

The TPLF and Eritrean forces fought together against Mengistu, and Eritrea secured its independence from Ethiopia with his departure. But relations soured soon after. The two nations went to war over a border dispute in 1998-2000.

Abiy won a Nobel Peace Prize last year for making peace with Eritrea, but the TPLF continues to regard the country as a mortal enemy.

Abiy’s government launched the offensive in Tigray after what it described as an attack by local forces on federal troops stationed there.

The TPLF accuses Abiy of wanting to consolidate control at the expense of Ethiopia’s 10 regions, which exercise wide-ranging powers over matters such as taxation and security. Abiy denies this.

Tensions escalated after Tigray held a regional election in September in defiance of the federal government, which had postponed voting nationwide in August because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The government called the Tigray vote illegal.