Ethiopia’s state- run broadcaster has said government forces were in control of the city of Chifra in the Afar region, their first major seizure since Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said before this week he’d head to the frontal lines to lead civil colors against fighters from the northern Tigray region.
Knockouts of thousands of people have failed and millions displaced since the war between Ethiopian civil and kindred colors, and the Tigrayan forces broke out in November 2020. The conflict has also caused a massive philanthropic extremity, with hundreds of thousands of people facing shortages.
The Tigrayan forces captured Chifra, on the border between the northern Afar and Amhara regions, after fighting boosted last month.
“ Ethiopian Defense Forces and Afar Special Forces have controlled Chifra,” the Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation said on its Twitter account on Sunday, without furnishing further details.
There was no immediate comment by the Tigrayan forces.
‘ Dead bodies everyplace’
Important of northern Ethiopia is under dispatches knockout and access for intelligencers is heavily confined, making battleground claims delicate to corroborate. Al Jazeera, still, was suitable to gain exclusive access to Chifra, the first transnational news organization to do so.
Reporting from “ the heart” of the city, Al Jazeera Arabic’s pressman Mohammed Taha Tewekel said the Tigrayan forces “ were driven out of this strategic area” by-government host from the Afar region, but also noted “ gunfire could be heard from all directions” for hours.
“ It (Chifra) has been the epicenter of military operations during the once 40 days,” Tewekel said during a live broadcast, with gunfire ringing in the background.
“ The scenes we witnessed are veritably shocking. Dead bodies everyplace on the thoroughfares. It’s living evidence of the ferociousness of the fighting. There are clear signs of the lack of humanity in this conflict. The city’s marketable shops were completely destroyed, indeed the kirks weren’t spared. All the residers have fled for their lives and the city has turned into military barracks for the Afari fighters,” he added.
The Afari fighters “ have seized the megacity” and are now advancing towards the municipalities of Bati and Kombolcha, the pressman said.
Read More: France, Germany latest countries to urge nationals to leave Ethiopia
Chifra is west of the city of Mille, which Tigrayan forces have been trying to capture for weeks because it lies along the trace linking landlocked Ethiopia to Djibouti, the Horn of Africa’s main harborage.
State- combined Fana Broadcasting reported on Friday that Abiy was on the frontal line with the army fighting the Tigrayan forces in Afar.
“ The moral of the army is veritably instigative,” he said in the reflections broadcast on Friday, promising to capture Chifra “ moment”.
After months of pressure, Abiy in November 2020 transferred colors to Tigray to remove the region’s governing party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) in response to what the government said was an attack on civil army camps. The TPLF, which dominated the civil government for nearly three decades until Abiy took office in 2018, said civil forces and its abettors launched a “ coordinated attack” against it.
The high minister promised a nippy palm and government forces seized Tigray’s capital, Mekelle, in late November. By June, still, the Tigrayan forces had reacquired utmost of the region and pushed into the neighboring Amhara and Afar regions.
The Tigrayan forces lately reported major territorial earnings, claiming this week to have seized a city just 220 km (135 country miles) from the capital, Addis Ababa.
Transnational alarm about the raising conflict has strengthened, with several foreign countries prompting their citizens to leave as agreement attempts by the United Nations and the United States have so far failed to yield any results.
Follow us on FACEBOOK for quick updates.
