Medical personnel were sent to the front lines to provide medical support to the Defense Forces
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The Addis Ababa City Administration has provided medical assistance to the FDRE Defense Forces.
The event was attended by the city's deputy mayor, Adanech Abebe, and the city's health bureau chief, Dr. Yohannes Chalan.
Deputy Mayor Adanech Abebe thanked the doctors for their professional support and said they would provide all necessary support to the medical staff and the army.
The health workers received about 1.7 million birr in medical supplies from the Addis Ababa administration.
Addis Ababa Health Bureau Head, Dr. Yohannes Chala, said, "Congratulations on the opportunity for health professionals to serve the Defense Forces."
10 specialist doctors to provide medical support; 24 Nurses: It is said that 48 medical professionals, including an anesthesiologist, are divided into two groups.
NAIROBI,
Kenya — When it comes to mountain warfare, the people of Tigray — an
ancient kingdom in the far north of Ethiopia, spread across jagged peaks
and lush farmland — have decades of hard-won experience.
Tigrayan
fighters led a brutal war through the 1970s and ’80s against a hated
Marxist dictator of Ethiopia, whom they eventually toppled in 1991,
becoming national heroes. For most of the next three decades, Tigrayans
ruled Ethiopia.
But after Abiy Ahmed,
a peace-talking young reformer, came to power as prime minister in
2018, he brusquely sidelined Tigray’s leaders. Tensions exploded
violently on Nov. 4, as the world was focused on the presidential
election in the United States, when Mr. Abiy launched military strikes
in Tigray.
Now Tigray is once again
at war, fighting the federal government. But this time the risks could
be even wider: the potential fracturing of Ethiopia and the upending of
the entire Horn of Africa.
The
battle pits the nation’s army and Mr. Abiy, an internationally feted
winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, against the ruling party of Tigray,
which commands a large force of well-armed and experienced fighters who
know their own mountain terrain well. Already the conflict has escalated
at alarming speed with intense fighting that has involved airstrikes
and artillery barrages, sent thousands of civilians fleeing across
borders — some in boats or even swimming — and led to reports of
civilian massacres.
With such
intransigent foes, analysts predict a potentially long and bloody fight
that is already spilling over Ethiopia’s borders
On Friday,
Tigray launched rockets at two airports in neighboring Amhara Province
and on Saturday said it had fired a volley of rockets at the main
airport in Ethiopia’s neighbor Eritrea, which Tigray accuses of siding
with Mr. Abiy.
The rush to war has
exacerbated ethnic divisions so badly that on Friday it prompted
warnings of potential ethnic cleansing and even genocide.
“The risk of atrocity crimes in Ethiopia remains high,” said Pramila Patten, the United Nations’ acting special adviser for the prevention of genocide, and Karen Smith, the special adviser on protecting civilians, in a joint statement.
Until recently Ethiopia, a close American military ally, was seen as the strategic linchpin of the volatile Horn of Africa. But with its brewing civil war spilling into Eritrea, refugees streaming into Sudan and Ethiopia’s peacekeeping mission to Somalia now under strain because of its domestic turmoil, analysts worry that Ethiopia could destabilize the region.
The dispute between Mr. Abiy and the Tigrayans goes back to the early days of his term as prime minister two years ago.
He moved quickly to shake up the country after decades of stultifying, iron-fisted rule under the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. Political prisoners were freed from secret prisons, exiled dissidents were welcomed home and Mr. Abiy promised free elections and press freedom.
Those rapid, wide-ranging reforms, which eventually helped Mr. Abiy win the Nobel Peace Prize, were a pointed repudiation of the Tigrayan old guard. Leaders of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front were unceremoniously sidelined and, in some cases, prosecuted for corruption and human rights abuses.
Resentful and angry, the Tigrayan leaders retreated to Mekelle, the regional capital of Tigray. The two sides sparred over politics, funding and control of the army. Then in September the Tigrayans openly defied Mr. Abiy and proceeded with regional elections that had been canceled in the rest of Ethiopia because of the pandemic.
But that clash, ostensibly a dispute between Ethiopian elites, was also emblematic of a much wider threat to Mr. Abiy’s authority.
Although Ethiopia is one country, it contains 10 regions, many of them ethnic strongholds that have historically jostled for power. In moving so quickly to liberalize politics in 2018, Mr. Abiy may have inadvertently unleashed pent-up regional frustrations that had been simmering for decades.
Rivalries among ethnic groups like the Oromo, Amhara, Tigray and Somali burst into the open, leading to violent clashes that have increased in frequency and intensity this year, often killing scores of people. With Ethiopia’s shaky federation straining badly, Tigray emerged at the vanguard of a movement pressing for greater autonomy for Ethiopia’s regions.
Mr. Abiy, who started to imprison opponents, pushed for much tighter central control.
“Everyone saw this coming,” said Kjetil Tronvoll, a scholar of Ethiopian politics at Bjorknes University College in Norway. “Both sides felt insecure and started to mobilize troops. It was a clear signal of a civil war in the making.”
Mr. Abiy’s speed in prosecuting the war has sent waves of alarm across the region and dismayed those who once lauded him as a peacemaker.
With phone and internet connections cut off, it’s hard to know exactly what is happening in Tigray. But both sides agree that government warplanes have pounded targets around Mekelle, that some Ethiopian troops were pushed over the border into Eritrea and that the most intense fighting has raged in western Tigray. By Sunday at least 20,000 Ethiopian civilians had fled into Sudan, a refugee stream that the United Nations fears could quickly become a flood. Sudan says it is preparing for up to 200,000 refugees.
There have been accusations of war crimes against both sides, including a massacre reported by Amnesty International in which dozens of villagers were said to have been chopped to death with machetes, possibly by pro-Tigray militiamen.
"Rumors that Ethiopian officials are involved in mediation talks with the TPLF in Uganda are false." ፡
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Reports from various media outlets that Ethiopian officials are expected to participate in mediation talks with the TPLF in Uganda are false and unconfirmed by the Emergency Proclamation Task Force.
The Federal Government of Ethiopia (FGS) is committed to upholding the rule of law in Tigray State.
Media outlets have been called upon to verify Ethiopian rule of law questions through the Emergency Proclamation.
