The government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and the Tigrinya authorities had accepted an invitation from the AU to the talks, but the talks that were supposed to start last weekend in South Africa did not take place.
The African Union (AU) on Sunday called for an immediate ceasefire in Tigray, where violence is escalating, with rebels in this region of northern Ethiopia saying they are “ready to respect it”. The city of Shire, in northwestern Tigray, was bombed for several days during a joint offensive by Ethiopian and Eritrean troops against the Tigray rebels that claimed several civilian casualties.
A member of the International Rescue Committee (IRC), an NGO that provides disaster relief, was killed and another injured in one such attack on Friday, which killed two other civilians, according to the IRC. After the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, who expressed concern over the escalation of violence, the president of the AU Commission Moussa Faki Mahamat called for “immediate and unconditional action”. “The President urges the parties to reaffirm their commitment to dialogue in accordance with their agreement to convene direct talks in South Africa,” he added in a statement. In response, the rebels of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) said they were “ready to respect” this interruption in the fighting. “We are ready to respect an immediate cessation of hostilities.
We also ask the international community to force the Eritrean army to withdraw from Tigray, to take measures for the immediate cessation of hostilities and to put pressure on the Ethiopian government to come to the negotiating table, ”said the TPLF. Earlier, the US Department’s Africa Bureau had judged on Twitter that “the priority” was “to obtain an immediate cessation of hostilities.”
The ball is now in the field of the Ethiopian government, which immediately refused to comment. The government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and the Tigrinya authorities had accepted an invitation from the AU to the talks, but the talks that were supposed to start last weekend in South Africa did not take place. Diplomats suggested that logistical problems were partly behind their postponement. The latest fighting took place when US Special Envoy Mike Hammer arrived in Addis Ababa to press for an end to the nearly two-year war. The city of Shire, about 40 km south of the border between Ethiopia and Eritrea, was “subjected to constant airstrikes and heavy artillery throughout the week,” a humanitarian worker told AFP.
An IRC member was killed there while the NGO was distributing food to “WFP beneficiaries, including vulnerable mothers and children,” the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) said Sunday. A WFP spokesperson in Ethiopia said: “WFP condemns any deliberate aiming of humanitarian activities and strongly urges all parties to the conflict to respect and protect humanitarian operations and personnel, in accordance with their obligations under humanitarian law. international”. Referring to the “recent indiscriminate attacks” by Ethiopian and Eritrean forces, the head of the United States Humanitarian Aid Agency (USAID), Samantha Power, judges, for her part, that “the risk of atrocities and loss of human lives are intensifying, particularly around the Shire. ” Clashes resumed in August in Tigray after a five-month hiatus, shaking hopes of resolving a conflict that has killed countless civilians and diminishing the need for humanitarian aid.
The conflict erupted in November 2020 when Nobel Peace Prize laureate Abiy Ahmed sent troops against the TPLF, the ruling party in Tigray which it accuses of organizing attacks on military camps. The TPLF dominated Ethiopia’s ruling coalition for decades, before Abiy Ahmed came to power in 2018.
