Eritrean soldiers drove through the northern Ethiopian town of Adigrat on Wednesday, two witnesses told Reuters, days after the \u200bHorn of Africa neighbours severed diplomatic ties, raising fears of outright conflict.<\/p>\n
The sightings of Eritrean troops would be the first confirmation of \u200ctheir presence on Ethiopian soil during the conflict in the country’s north\u00a0between the federal government and a rebel alliance that broke out last month.<\/p>\n
Eritrea\u2019s information minister Yemane Gebremeskel denied Eritrean forces were there, calling the witness accounts part of an Ethiopian plan to justify a war of aggression against its smaller neighbour.<\/p>\n
Ethiopia has accused Eritrea of \u200bbacking the rebel alliance battling federal government troops since September 23 in the northern regions of Tigray, Amhara and Afar. Afar’s chief \u200badministrator said last week that Eritrean troops were fighting in his region, but Reuters could not confirm that.<\/p>\n
Asmara \u2060has denied the allegations, which led to the severing of diplomatic ties last week.<\/p>\n
Spokespeople for Ethiopia’s government and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed did not \u200bimmediately respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n
WITNESSES SAW ERITREAN TROOPS DRIVING THROUGH TOWN<\/strong><\/p>\n Two residents of Adigrat, a town in Tigray about 25 km (15 miles) south \u200bof the Eritrean border that has not experienced clashes during the current conflict, said they had seen two trucks with dozens of Eritrean soldiers driving through the town on Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n They said they could identify the soldiers as Eritrean by their off-white camouflage uniforms.<\/p>\n Another Adigrat resident who was not in town at the time said family \u200bmembers had told him they had also seen Eritrean troops.<\/p>\n Reuters could not independently verify their accounts. All spoke on condition of anonymity because of \u200bsecurity concerns related to the ongoing conflict.<\/p>\n The Eritrean information minister Yemane said the allegations were intended to provide Ethiopia with a pretext to attack Eritrea.<\/p>\n For over \u200cthree years, \u2060Abiy and other Ethiopian officials have repeatedly said that sea access is vital for their landlocked country’s security and economy. Asmara views those comments as an implicit threat against it, while Addis Ababa has said it aims to gain sea access peacefully.<\/p>\n Ethiopia \u201chas tried to re-package this war agenda in terms of self-defence by fabricating various allegations against Eritrea,\u201d Yemane said. \u201cSo we connect the dots.\u201d<\/p>\n NORTHERN ETHIOPIA CONFLICT FUELS FEARS OF WIDER WAR<\/strong><\/p>\n Eritrean soldiers fought in \u200bsupport of Ethiopia\u2019s federal government during \u200ba 2020-2022 civil war in \u2060Tigray.<\/p>\n Some of them remained in northern parts of Tigray close to the border well after the war ended, according to Ethiopia\u2019s government, UN experts and human rights organisations. Eritrea denied this.<\/p>\n The fighting that broke out last month \u200bhas raised fear that unrest could spread beyond Ethiopia\u2019s borders in an increasingly fragile region where other \u200bpowers are competing for \u2060influence.<\/p>\n Tigray has Ethiopia’s longtime foe Eritrea to its north, and Sudan \u2014 caught up in a more than three-year-old civil war \u2014 to its west.<\/p>\n Ethiopia’s government has also accused Egypt and Sudan of supporting the opposition alliance. Both have denied this.<\/p>\n On Saturday, the US State Department urged Asmara and Addis Ababa to exercise \u2060restraint, warning \u200bthat a conflict would jeopardise US collaboration with both countries.<\/p>\n Eritrea, a former province of \u200bEthiopia, won its statehood in 1993 after a 30-year independence struggle. The two countries fought a border war from 1998-2000 that killed tens of thousands.<\/p>\n They normalised diplomatic relations in 2018, \u200bwinning Abiy the Nobel Peace Prize, but relations soured once again during the 2020-2022 Tigray war.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Eritrean soldiers drove through the northern Ethiopian town of Adigrat on Wednesday, two witnesses told Reuters, days after the \u200bHorn of Africa neighbours severed diplomatic ties, raising fears of outright conflict. The sightings of Eritrean troops would be the first confirmation of \u200ctheir presence on Ethiopian soil during the conflict in the country’s north\u00a0between the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":9159,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":3,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,2362,1129],"tags":[1185,1186,115,114,534,5517],"class_list":["post-22219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-africa","category-featured","category-security","tag-afar","tag-amhara","tag-eritrea","tag-ethiopia","tag-tigray","tag-yemane-gebremeskel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22219"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22220,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22219\/revisions\/22220"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}