Fighting has broken out in western Tigray, in one of the most serious breaches yet of the three-year-old peace deal between Ethiopia\u2019s federal government and fighters in the northern region.<\/p>\n
Tigray\u2019s regional government said in a statement from Mekelle, the Tigrayan capital, that federal forces opened the assault at dawn on Saturday, advancing from the direction of Shererina, near the Sudanese border.<\/p>\n
Abraham Belay, a government minister who led Tigray\u2019s transitional government during the war, confirmed the clashes but accused Tigray People\u2019s Liberation Front (TPLF) chairman Debretsion Gebremichael\u2019s forces of starting them.<\/p>\n
\u201cEnough war! Let us resolve our differences through dialogue,\u201d he said in a post on Facebook<\/p>\n
The fighting follows months of deteriorating relations between Addis Ababa and the TPLF, the party that ruled Ethiopia for nearly three decades before Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed came to power in 2018.<\/p>\n
Both sides have accused each other of failing to implement the provisions of the\u00a02022 peace agreement.<\/p>\n
Tigrayan authorities said Ethiopia\u2019s ruling Prosperity Party has waged a long blockade and drone campaign against the region, adding that this had now escalated into full-scale war.<\/p>\n
The regional government urged Tigrayan forces, civil society and religious institutions to prepare for a struggle it called one of national survival, using the slogan \u201cNo to National Destruction\u201d.<\/p>\n
Getachew Reda, a former TPLF spokesman who now advises Abiy, separately urged the Tigray Defence Forces commanders to abandon Debretsion, accusing him of relying on Eritrea and Amhara\u2019s Fano militia to force his way back to power.<\/p>\n
Reda and Redwan Hussein, Ethiopia\u2019s intelligence chief, who signed the Pretoria deal for TPLF and the federal government respectively in 2022,\u00a0co-wrote\u00a0an Al Jazeera op-ed in June warning that war was imminent.<\/p>\n
Kjetil Tronvoll, an Ethiopia specialist at Oslo New University College, told Al Jazeera that the fighting marked the \u201cmost serious incident\u201d since the 2022 peace deal. The deal, Tronvoll added, halted the war between the two parties but left \u201cthe core reasons of conflict between Mekelle and Addis\u201d unresolved.<\/p>\n
In the days running up to the armed clashes, Ethiopian state media ran a campaign accusing Debretsion by name of rallying Tigrayans toward war.<\/p>\n
The fighting caps months of escalating confrontation since the\u00a0Pretoria Agreement of November 2022, which ended a war that began two years earlier and killed hundreds of thousands, but left unresolved deeper disputes over disarmament and the TPLF\u2019s legal status.<\/p>\n
In June, the United States imposed visa restrictions on what it said were TPLF \u201chardliners\u201d accused of blocking peace. The TPLF described it as being based on an \u201cincomplete and imbalanced\u201d picture of the standoff.<\/p>\n
By mid-July, TPLF had declared the Pretoria agreement \u201ceffectively dead\u201d, even as US Ambassador Ervin Massinga travelled to Mekelle to try to preserve the deal.<\/p>\n
Faisal Roble, a regional analyst, told Al Jazeera that the beginning of the fighting was a sign that efforts to resolve the dispute between the parties by the US had not succeeded.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithout a powerful international intervention,\u201d he said, \u201cwe could be heading to a much larger war.\u201d<\/p>\n
Source: Al-Jazeera<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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