Conflicts between the two sides have continued since the local armed “Tigray People’s Liberation Front” in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia attacked the country’s National Defense Forces on November 4. The Ethiopian Defence Force said on the 22nd that it would use tanks and artillery to surround the capital of Tigray, Merclay.
According to Reuters, Ethiopian Defense Force spokesman Dejene Zegaye told the state-run television station Ethiopia Broadcasting Corporation on the 22nd that the next is the decisive stage of the operation, and will use tanks and artillery to surround Merklai to end the mountain war. He pointed out that so far, the IDF has only attacked the targets of the garrison of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, but the situation in Merclay is different, reminding the local 500,000 residents to be safe from shells.
In a statement on the 20th, the Ethiopian government said that the IDF took full control of the towns of Aksum, Adua and the surrounding areas of Adigrat in Tigray Oblast on that day, and was advancing towards the town of Adigrat, and many militants of the “People’s Liberation Front” surrendered. Meanwhile, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front claimed that it had occupied the town of Adigrat, 116 kilometers north of Mekir. Due to the interruption of telephone signals and Internet communication lines in Tigray, it is difficult to verify specific information about the fighting between the two sides.
United Nations Secretary-General Guterres said at a press conference on the 20th that the United Nations is very worried about the situation in Ethiopia, especially its “serious humanitarian impact”. According to the Associated Press on the 20th, the UNHCR said that about 32,000 people fled from Ethiopia to neighboring Sudan due to the Tigray state conflict, and the number may increase to 200,000 in the next six months.
According to The Paper, the root cause of the conflict in Tigray State in Ethiopia can be traced back to the gradual abolition of federal reform by current Prime Minister Ahmed Abi, which has caused rift between the government of Tigray and the federal government. So when Prime Minister Abi announced that the national elections originally scheduled for August 21 were postponed due to the coronavirus epidemic, the local government of Tigray refused to implement it, believing that Abi’s decision was not only “unconstitutional”, but also essentially an extension of his term.
