KHARTOUM -

In the first massive crossing since the Tigray War, thousands of refugees crossed from Ethiopia's Amhara region to Sudan's Gedaref state, and dozens of Tigrayans managed to cross the border despite the Ethiopian Federal Army's monitoring of the crossings.

Today, Tuesday, the Sudan News Agency quoted a source as saying that 3,000 Ethiopian refugees from the Amhara region crossed the Sudanese border to the village of Taya in Basanda locality in the state of Gedaref in eastern Sudan yesterday evening, and the flow is still continuing.

This number represents the largest number of refugees crossing into Sudan in a single day since the first wave that occurred in the country in November 2020 when the Ethiopian army launched war on the rulers of Tigray region.

In a remarkable development, the new refugees belong to the Komnt tribes from the Amhara region, and they are allies of the Amhara nationalism in their struggle against the Tigrays, while the Tigrayans prevailed over the waves of asylum late last year.

More than 60,000 Tigrayan refugees are residing in the Um Rakouba and Al-Tunaidiba camps in Gedaref state, as well as thousands of others in the Hamdayit and Al-Hashabeh reception centers.


Enemy refugees

The new wave of asylum confirms the deterioration of the security, political and humanitarian conditions in Ethiopia as a result of the escalation of the inter-ethnic war in the country.

After the Tigrayans regained their capital, Mekele, in late June, their forces opened up to attack areas in the Amhara and Afar regions, which heralds the outbreak of a large-scale war.

The director of the Sudanese Hamdayet Refugee Reception Center, Yaqoub Muhammad Yaqoub, confirmed - to Al Jazeera Net - the influx of more than a thousand refugees from Amhara towards the Sudanese border at Tayeh.

Yaqoub expected an increase in the flow of refugees of Ethiopian nationalities due to the security and military conditions in the country, saying that for days they are expecting the influx of thousands of Ethiopian refugees from Amhara in the Ethiopian town of Hamra towards the Hamdayet Center.

He also said that the administration of the Hamdayet Refugee Reception Center had calculated that by preparing a camp to receive refugees from Amhara, in an area affiliated with the Central Reserve Forces, two kilometers from Hamdayet, to avoid the friction of new refugees from Amhara with the Tigrays in Hamdayit.

The director of the Hamdayet reception center revealed an increase in the flow of Tigrayan refugees to the center after battles in the Ethiopian town of Adbay.

He stressed that more than 150 refugees from Tigray tried to cross the Sett River separating the two countries' borders the day before yesterday, but an Ethiopian army force targeted them with sniper rifles, causing a number of deaths, as well as drowning 3 others due to the force of the current.

He explained that about 80 refugees managed to reach Hamdayet center after a bitter adventure with Ethiopian army snipers, and the torrential stream of the Sett River.


border fire

According to a military source in Hamdayet for Al Jazeera Net, a force of the Ethiopian army fired on the refugees, and on a Sudanese who was on the western bank of the river inside Sudanese territory, killing him on the spot.

The Sudanese army force stationed in Hamdayit chose not to respond to the source of the fire on the eastern bank of the river, in light of border tension between the two countries, which resulted in the closure of the Qalabat border crossing after the killing of a Sudanese soldier and the disappearance of a captain.

Captain Bahaa El-Din Youssef disappeared while leading a force that was part of a search operation for Sudanese children kidnapped by an Ethiopian militia for a ransom.

Since last November, the Sudanese army has regained 90% of the fertile Al-Fashqa lands that Ethiopian militias have controlled for about 25 years.