Airstrikes and artillery fire rocked northern Ethiopia\u2019s Tigray region overnight into Monday, aid sources said, in clashes between federal government \u200cand rebel forces that have raised fears of wider fighting.<\/p>\n
Air attacks killed at least 17 people northwest of Tigray\u2019s capital Mekelle, which federal government forces took over the weekend, according to a bulletin circulated among humanitarian groups.<\/p>\n
The bulletin added that the government forces exchanged artillery fire with fighters loyal to the Tigray People\u2019s Liberation Front part of a rebel alliance \u200baiming to overthrow Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed\u2019s government.<\/p>\n
Spokespeeson for Abiy\u2019s office, the federal Ethiopian National Defence Force and the TPLF did not \u200bimmediately respond to requests for comment on the reports, which Reuters could not confirm independently.<\/p>\n
Analysts say the fighting threatens to escalate into a wider conflict, with Ethiopia accusing neighbouring Eritrea and Sudan, and beyond them Egypt, of supporting the \u200barmed opposition. All three countries have denied this.<\/p>\n
Last week, Ethiopia and Eritrea, which fought a border war from 1998-2000, severed diplomatic ties over the \u200ballegations.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, the leaders of Egypt, Eritrea, Sudan and Somalia discussed the crisis during a meeting, according to two Egyptian security officials and one political official, speaking on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n
They agreed to coordinate military and intelligence efforts if the conflict escalated to the borders Ethiopia shares with Eritrea, Sudan and Somalia, \u200bthe sources added, without going into further detail<\/p>\n
The fighting since September 23 is the worst escalation of violence since a 2020-2022 civil \u200bwar in Tigray that resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths.<\/p>\n
\u2014Reuters\u2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":21693,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[78,26],"class_list":["post-47330","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-featured","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Last week, Ethiopia and Eritrea, which fought a border war from 1998-2000, severed diplomatic ties over the \u200ballegations.","published_date":"","news_description":"Last week, Ethiopia and Eritrea, which fought a border war from 1998-2000, severed diplomatic ties over the \u200ballegations.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/47330","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\/47330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47331,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/47330\/revisions\/47331"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=47330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}