War crimes feared in Ethiopia's Tigray conflict

Fighting between Ethiopian government forces and rebellious northern leaders could spiral out of control and war crimes may have been committed, the United Nations said on Friday, as repercussions spread around the volatile Horn of Africa.

The 10-day conflict in Tigray region has killed hundreds, sent refugees flooding into Sudan, and raised fears it may suck in Eritrea or force Ethiopia to divert troops from an African force opposing al-Qaeda-linked militants in Somalia.

It may also blemish the reputation of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for a 2018 peace pact with Eritrea and had won plaudits for opening Ethiopia's economy and easing a repressive political system.

"There is a risk this situation will spiral totally out of control, leading to heavy casualties and destruction, as well as mass displacement within Ethiopia itself and across borders," UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet said via a spokesman.

A massacre of civilians reported by Amnesty International, if confirmed as committed by a party to the conflict, would amount to war crimes, she added.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed accuses the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), which rules the mountainous region of more than five million people, of treason and terrorism.

Federal troops say the TPLF rose against them last week but that they have since survived a siege and recaptured the west of the region. With communications cut and media barred, there has been no independent confirmation of the state of the fighting.

The TPLF says Abiy's government has systematically persecuted Tigrayans since he took office in April 2018 and terms the military operations an "invasion."

Federal troops have been carrying out airstrikes and there has been fighting on the ground since Wednesday of last week. Ethiopia denied a TPLF claim that federal jets had knocked out a power dam.

Ethiopia PM downplays war fears while hundreds killed in north

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed rules out the possibility of civil war in his country.

Abiy, who comes from Ethiopia's largest ethnic group, the Oromo, said parliament named former Addis Ababa university academic and deputy minister for science and higher education Mulu Nega, 52, as the new leader of Tigray.

There was no immediate response to Mulu's appointment from current Tigray leader Debretsion Gebremichael, who won a local election in September despite central government orders to cancel it, or from other TPLF figures. A dissertation by Mulu, on the website of Twente University in the Netherlands where he obtained a doctorate, states his birthplace as Tigray.

News also came on Friday that the African Union (AU) had dismissed its security head, an Ethiopian national, after Abiy's government accused him of disloyalty.

The bloc's chair, Moussa Faki Mahamat, ordered the removal of Gebreegziabher Mebratu Melese in a Nov. 11 memo seen by Reuters after Ethiopia's Defense Ministry wrote with concerns.

Horn of Africa expert Rashid Abdi said Gebreegziabher was Tigrayan and his departure from the AU post was part of the Abiy government's efforts to sideline prominent Tigrayans.

"The purging of competent Tigrayan officials in the midst of the conflict is not good for the morale of the (security and military) services," he said, referring also to other removals of Tigrayan officials since the military offensive began.

"It also plays into the notion that this is essentially an ethnic war masked as a center-periphery power struggle."

However, Abiy this week urged Ethiopians to ensure Tigrayans are not targeted. "We all must be our brother's keeper by protecting Tigrayans from any negative pressures," he said.

His opening of political space since taking office in 2018 exposed ethnic fractures in Africa's second-most populous nation of 115 million people. Before the Tigray flare-up, clashes killed hundreds and uprooted hundreds of thousands.

An internal UN security report said Ethiopian police visited an office of the UN World Food Programme (WFP) in Amhara region to request a list of Tigrayan staff.

The local police chief told them of "the order of identifying ethnic Tigrayans from all government agencies and NGOs," the report said, underlining the conflict's ethnic undertones. Amhara borders Tigray and its rulers back Abiy.

The UN told the police they do not identify staff by ethnicity, according to the report. There was no immediate comment from the Amhara regional police or government.

Rights group Amnesty International said on Thursday that scores and possibly hundreds of civilians were stabbed and hacked to death in the region on Nov. 9, citing witnesses who blamed the TPLF. Debretsion denied that to Reuters.

Ethiopia's national army is one of Africa's largest. But its best fighters are from Tigray and much of its hardware is also there, under the Northern Command.

Ethiopia hosts the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa. Nearly 4,400 Ethiopian troops serve in its Somalia peacekeeping force.

About 500 Ethiopian forces deployed in Somalia separately from the AU peacekeeping force returned home in early November, three sources told Reuters.

"A protracted internal conflict will inflict devastating damage on both Tigray and Ethiopia as a whole, undoing years of vital development progress. It could, in addition, all too easily spill across borders, potentially destabilizing the whole sub-region," added the UN's Bachelet.

More than 14,500 have fled Ethiopia to Sudan: UN

The UN refugee agency said on Friday that clashes in Ethiopia had prompted more than 14,500 people to flee into neighboring Sudan since early November, with the speed of new arrivals "overwhelming the current capacity to provide aid."

Among them are thousands of children, said Geneva-based spokesman Babar Baloch, describing them as "exhausted and scared." Many had very few possessions, indicating that they had arrived in a hurry, he added.

"UNHCR and its partners are ramping up assistance, but the numbers of new arrivals are far outpacing the capacity on the ground," he told Geneva journalists, saying that many had come from the towns of Humera and nearby towns of Rawyan and Dima.

"General living and operating conditions inside Tigray are becoming more difficult with power outages and food and fuel supplies becoming extremely scarce. Communications have been cut off creating an information blackout," he added.

To cope with the influx, Sudan has approved the establishment of a refugee camp at Um Rakuba for 20,000 people.

There are also concerns about a mass displacement of thousands of Eritrean refugees at a camp in Ethiopia as fighting closes in on the facility, Baloch said.

(Source: Agencies)

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