Tigray Rebels Announce Troop Deployment In Northern Ethiopia

Rebel fighters in Ethiopia’s Tigray region had pulled out of a neighbouring region to counter a major offensive by government forces, but there was no sign of a withdrawal from the capital authorities said.

Ethiopian troops and Tigray rebels renewed their battles in late August, ending a five-month truce. The setback dimmed hopes of ending the country’s two years of civil war through peaceful negotiations.

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Eritrean troops have returned to the battlefield in support of Ethiopia’s federal and regional forces, who are fighting the TPLF on multiple fronts in the country’s north.

Eritrean forces are thriving in their efforts against Ethiopia, and Tigrayan authorities say that a redeployment of fighters from occupied parts of the Amhara region to the south of Tigray was necessary to counter intensifying combat to the north.

“So because of this, on the southern front, we have withdrawn from the areas of Amhara region we entered,” Tigray’s regional authorities said in a statement.

Amhara regional officials told AFP that the TPLF rebels had withdrawn from some towns, but remained in control of others. He said he had heard reports of some localised fighting. AFP was not able to independently verify claims of battlefield gains or troop movements.

Access to northern Ethiopia has been severely restricted and Tigray has been under a communications blackout for over a year.

The involvement of Eritrea in a prolonged and bloody military conflict has provoked strong condemnation from Western nations pushing for a peaceful resolution to the war in Africa’s second-most populous country.

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Eritrean troops supported Ethiopian forces in the early stages of the war, which erupted in November 2020 when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sent soldiers into Tigray to unseat the TPLF.

In a historic shift of alliances, Ethiopia’s ruling coalition has elected a new party chair, who is subsequently expected to take over the leadership of the ruling coalition in its entirety. A change for which the world has been waiting almost three decades.

In September, authorities in the closed-off nation issued a general call for mobilisation of its armed forces.

The war has claimed untold lives and spurred a humanitarian crisis, and all sides to the conflict have been accused of grave abuses against civilians.