conflicts
Ethiopia: Federal government dismayed by flaring fighting
Ethiopian government soldiers on a military truck near Agula, in the Tigray region. photo
© Ben Curtis/AP/dpa
The guns in northern Ethiopia have been silent since the spring – fighting between the army and the People’s Liberation Front of Tigray has broken out again this week.
The German government has expressed its dismay that fighting is now raging again in northern Ethiopia after a five-month ceasefire. A spokesman for the Federal Foreign Office in Berlin demanded that the parties to the conflict must immediately silence their weapons again. The people of Tigray, Amhara and Afar have suffered enough. “The conflict can only be resolved at the negotiating table,” he stressed.
According to the announcement, the Federal Government continues to support the mediation efforts of the African Union, which must now be intensified. Too many innocent civilians, including women and children, have already lost their lives or been victims of serious human rights violations. “In addition, since the conflict began, hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced and millions of people are suffering from hunger.”
The spokesman for the State Department condemned the fact that the TPLF had recently confiscated fuel, which was urgently needed for the distribution of life-saving aid, as “particularly despicable”. He was referring to a statement from the United Nations World Food Program (WFP), which warns of a worsening of the humanitarian situation in Tigray following the theft of several fuel tanks. The more than half a million liters of fuel had been delivered to the regional capital, Mek’ele, just a few days earlier.
The People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) said it had not stolen anything, but was simply retrieving fuel it had “borrowed” from the WFP. The fuel will be used, among other things, to operate clinics and other medical facilities in Tigray, which were looted and damaged by government troops during the “invasion”.