In the aftermath of the imposition of a state of emergency in the state of Tigray, Ethiopia estimated Thursday (November 5th) that it was now "at war" against this dissident region located in the North.
"Our country has entered a war that it did not foresee. This war is shameful, it is senseless," General Berhanu Jula said at a press conference in Addis Ababa.
"We are working to ensure that the war does not reach the center of the country" and is confined to Tigray, he added, while Addis Ababa launched a military operation there on Wednesday.
The federal government had declared a state of emergency in the state of Tigray after an attack on a "federal military base" on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed accuses the local government, led by the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), of being behind the attack, which comes after weeks of latent conflict.
"The TPLF attacked a [federal] military camp in Tigray," Abiy Ahmed said in a text posted to Facebook and Twitter at around 2 am local time [11 pm GMT].
"Our defense forces have been ordered […] to assume their task of saving the nation. The last stage of the red line has been crossed [and] the federal government is therefore forced into military confrontation," a- he added.
According to Redwan Hussein, spokesperson for the crisis cell set up by the government, "the military objective is, first, to maintain law and order, then to liberate the Tigrayan people".
The government will ensure "to involve the populations of Tigray in their own liberation, so as not to be victims and to act as a shield for the […] small gang of the TPLF [which] does not represent [all the inhabitants]", he said. -he adds.
Such a military response could mark the start of a potential internal conflict in Africa's second most populous country, gripped by growing internal tensions.
Tigray, located near the border with Eritrea, held regional elections in September despite the disagreement of the federal government, which ruled the ballot illegal.
"Many dead" in the attack, according to Addis Ababa
Abiy Ahmed said on state television that "disloyal forces" had turned against the army in Mekele, the capital of Tigray, and Dansha, a town in the western part of the region.
The assault on Dansha was "repelled" by security forces from the Amhara region, which borders southern Tigray, he added.
The attack left "many dead, injured and material damage," the prime minister said in his televised speech.
The local government, for its part, claimed that the northern command of the federal army had defected in its favor, which the prime minister's office denied.
Netblocks, a site that monitors Internet shutdowns, said that network appeared to have been shut down in the area as of 1 a.m. local time.
Likewise, the concrete nature of the federal military response was not immediately clear.
Illegal regional elections according to Addis Ababa
With the rise of tensions, Tigray no longer recognizes the authority of the federal state since the national elections which were to be held last August were postponed.
Rejecting the extension by the federal Parliament of the mandate of deputies - national and regional - supposed to expire in October, the Tigrayan leaders decided to unilaterally hold elections in their region in September.
Since then, each camp considers the other as illegitimate.
Ethiopian senators voted in early October for a break in contacts and funding between federal authorities and officials in Tigray.
Officials from Tigray dominated national politics for nearly 30 years before Abiy Ahmed came to power in 2018, who sidelined them for the first time since the fall of dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1991 .
"Half of the armed forces" concentrated in the region
Last week, these tensions crystallized over control of Tigray's military personnel and equipment.
Because this state shelters a significant part of the personnel and military equipment of the federal State, a legacy of the war which had opposed in 1998-2000 Ethiopia to Eritrea, which borders this northern region.
The region totals "more than half of all personnel in the armed forces and mechanized divisions" in the country, according to a report by the International Crisis Group (ICG) think tank released on Friday.
The population of Tigray represents 5% of the approximately 109 million Ethiopian inhabitants but the region is richer and more influential than the eight other regions of the country.
However, officials in Tigraya recently said they would not start a military conflict.
"We will never be the first to shoot, nor the first to fail," Getachew Reda, a senior TPLF official, told AFP last week.
Tuesday evening, hours before Prime Minister's announcement, Wondimu Asamnew, another senior Tigrayan official, told AFP that the federal government was amassing troops on the southern border of Tigray - information that could not be independently verified.
With AFP and Reuters
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