Web monitor NetBlocks said on Friday it had detected an internet disruption in northern Ethiopia, where war broke \u200bout this week between the federal military and forces from the \u200cTigray region and their allies.<\/p>\n
“Confirmed: Network data indicate a subnational internet disruption in northern Ethiopia corresponding to reports of a telecoms blackout in Tigray,” the monitor said \u200bon its official social media account.<\/p>\n
The cause of the disruption was \u200bnot immediately clear. Spokesperson for Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s office \u2060and for Tigray’s regional ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, \u200bdid not immediately respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n
A Tigrayan source living overseas who spoke \u200bon condition of anonymity said they were unable to reach people in Tigray and said that their contacts in the capital Addis Ababa had also experienced difficulties connecting with \u200brelatives in the region, with the outages sparking fears of a \u200breturn to the dire conditions seen in the 2020 to 2022 war in northern Ethiopia.<\/p>\n
During \u200cthat \u2060war, which ended with a peace deal in November 2022, Tigray was largely cut off from the outside world as communications were severed, and access to food, cash and medicines was severely restricted, pushing hundreds of \u200bthousands of people \u200binto famine-like conditions.<\/p>\n
The \u2060latest outbreak of violence is the most serious escalation since that conflict, with Tigrayan forces seizing three local \u200bairports and launching attacks in the neighbouring Afar and \u200bAmhara regions \u2060with allies there this week against federal troops.<\/p>\n
The fighting prompted people in Tigray to rush to shops on Wednesday and Thursday to stock up on \u2060basic supplies \u200band withdraw cash, with residents telling Reuters \u200bthat shelves were being emptied out as a result of panic-buying.<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":40348,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[78,26],"class_list":["post-46445","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-featured","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"The fighting prompted people in Tigray to rush to shops on Wednesday and Thursday to stock up on \u2060basic supplies.","published_date":"","news_description":"The fighting prompted people in Tigray to rush to shops on Wednesday and Thursday to stock up on \u2060basic supplies.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/46445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/46445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46446,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/46445\/revisions\/46446"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=46445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}