Ethiopia: heavy fighting between Eritrean soldiers and Tigrayan forces
On May 24, fighting took place around the hill of Geza Gille, in Tigray, on the road leading to the border town of Badme (illustrative image) REUTERS / Tiksa Negeri
Text by: Léonard Vincent Follow
2 mins
Tigrayan forces say they repelled an Eritrean army attack on May 24 in what is believed to be the worst military incident in the region since a ceasefire was declared in March.
In a series of messages posted on Tuesday on Twitter, Getachew Reda, the adviser to the president of Tigray, said that "
a series of counter-offensives
" had inflicted heavy losses on the Eritrean troops who crossed the border on their feast day national.
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Two brigades and a battalion, or about 6,000 Eritrean soldiers, would have been engaged this time in this new clash with the Tigrayans, the most serious for months.
This is what an Eritrean source told RFI, while Getachew Reda spoke of the 57th and 21st divisions of the Asmara army, more than three times that.
The fighting took place around the hill of Geza Gille, in Tigray, on the road leading to the border town of Badme, on May 24, the national day celebrating Eritrea's independence in 1991.
Tigrayan television mentions 120 dead, 195 injured and 4 prisoners on the Eritrean side, who were shown on the air confessing to having committed crimes during the war started in 2020.
On Saturday and Sunday, the violence continued deeper into Tigray.
Eritrean artillery fired 23 rounds of shells at the neighboring town of Shiraro, further south, hitting a dozen houses, including a school housing refugees, killing at least one 14-year-old girl and injuring 18 people, according to an internal UN bulletin quoted by Reuters.
A witness on the spot affirms that the shelling of Shiraro was "
incessant
".
The Eritrean government for its part has not yet said anything.
"
It is customary for President Issayas Afewerki to launch military operations on May 24
," commented Eritrean journalist Amanuel Ghirmai of Radio Erena.
Even if we cannot yet say that it was the Eritreans who fired first, it would be a way of involving the Tigrayans in combat to show that the latter remain a threat
”.
A good connoisseur of the players in the region wonders what the objective of the Eritrean generals really was, believing that their command was not "
totally irrational
".
And then he is also surprised that the Tigrayans waited a week to announce the incident.
Ethiopian Communication Minister Legesse Tulu, for his part, told the Emirati website Ain News that he knew nothing about the incident.
But he still indicates that those responsible are certainly the Tigrayan rebels who, according to him, have suffered heavy losses in the fighting.
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Ethiopia
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