Tigray: Ethiopian troops enter Aksum – Eritrea denies losses
Government forces and allied militias are expanding their control in Tigray. Monitors say Eritrean soldiers are pulling back, while US Secretary of State Rubio urges de-escalation.
Archive image · Photo: Tesfawel / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped and resized)
Ethiopian government troops and the allied Tigray Peace Force (TPF) militia have entered the historic city of Aksum in northern Tigray. This was documented by the independent conflict monitor ACLED. Rival Tigrayan fighters remained in the surrounding mountains, it said. ACLED also reported Eritrean troops withdrawing through the border town of Zalambessa; on Tuesday, Ethiopian tanks and heavy weapons were moved towards the border.
TPF spokesperson Solomon Hailemariam told AFP that Eritrean troops had suffered “heavy losses”. Eritrea's Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel rejected this as false and called the militia “not trustworthy”. The claims cannot be independently verified. A foreign security source estimated that 5,000 to 8,000 Eritrean soldiers had been sent into Ethiopia to support the TPLF. Eritrea accuses Ethiopia of using the conflict as a pretext to seize the Red Sea port of Assab.
Addis Ababa accuses Eritrea, Sudan and Egypt of backing a rebel alliance against Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's government; Khartoum and Cairo deny this. Government forces captured the regional capital Mekelle earlier in October, and the two countries severed diplomatic ties. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio urged Abiy to de-escalate in a phone call on Wednesday. The International Crisis Group warned that both states were “perilously close to all-out war”.