Lille julaften ble 200 sivile ifølge lokale myndigheter drept i Metekel-området i Benishangul-Gumuz-regionen. Massakren skjedde dagen etter at statsminister Abiy Ahmed besøkte området og krevde at skyldige i tidligere overgrep ble stilt til ansvar.
Sudan sends delegation to neighboring countries to talk over the country’s border dispute with Ethiopia.
Sudan’s Transitional Council and the Joint Council of Ministers have decided to visit neighboring countries regarding the country’s border dispute with Ethiopia, Al Ain News reported.
Authorities are reportedly in Cairo, Asmara, Juba and Saudi Arabia to explain the situation.
Lieutenant General Shamsedin Kabashi, a member of the Transitional Federal Council (TFP) is in South Sudan, Lieutenant General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, vice chairman of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) in Eritrea, Lieutenant General Ibrahim Jabir, a member of the Transitional Federal Council (TFP) in Chad, and Mohammed Faki Suleiman in Saudi Arabia.
Acting Foreign Minister Omar Kemedin, Chief of Intelligence General Jamal Aden Omar, Information Minister Faisal Mohammed Salih and Lieutenant General Sham Il-Dean Kabashi, a member of the Transitional Council, left for Cairo today.
Lt. Gen. Abdulfatah Alburhan visited the Ethiopia-Sudan border. Reportedly, he told members of the defense force that he will not leave the area as it belongs to Sudan.
On Thursday Sudan announced a ban on civil aviation in the airspace of Al-Qadarif state which borders Ethiopia, citing security reasons, Anadolu Agency reported.
“The Ministry of Defense has sent a decision to the Civil Aviation Authority to prevent flying over the airspace of Al-Qadarif State,” Abdelhafez Abdelrahim, the spokesman for the Sudanese Civil Aviation Authority, told Anadolu Agency.
The decision was based on “security reasons,” he added.
The two East African nations have been locked in a border dispute since December when Sudanese forces crossed into Ethiopia saying they were reclaiming their lands.
Government says three Tigray People’s Liberation Front officials were killed and five party members captured.
Ethiopia on Wednesday said its military killed three members of the Tigray region’s former ruling party, including former Ethiopian foreign minister Seyoum Mesfin.
Five members of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front were captured and the three killed after they refused to surrender to the military, the government’s task force for Tigray said on Twitter.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government declared victory in its conflict with the Front on November 28 last year after nearly a month of fighting.
Fugitive leaders of the Front pledged to continue the fight from mountains of Tigray in northern Ethiopia, but Reuters was unable to contact them for weeks.
The military said last week it had captured Sebhat Nega, a founding member of the Front.
At the weekend, it said it killed 15 members and captured eight, state-run TV reported.
Seyoum was Ethiopia’s foreign minister from 1991 to 2010.
Air strikes and battles since early November in Tigray are believed to have killed thousands of people.
Fighting is continuing in some parts and more than 2 million people need aid, the UN said this week.
Phone and internet connections to the Tigray region are down and access to the area is strictly controlled.
Source: The National News
Relations between the two governments, which both field substantial armed forces, are rapidly worsening.
Sudan says government-backed Ethiopian militiamen killed five women and a child during a raid just inside its territory, further fuelling tension in the border region.
On Wednesday, Sudan warned of “dangerous consequences” for bilateral relations after an Ethiopian warplane breached Sudanese airspace in the border area, according to a foreign ministry statement. It did not specify the type of Ethiopian aircraft or say how long it stayed inside Sudanese airspace.
“The Foreign Ministry condemns this escalation by the Ethiopian side and demand that such acts are not repeated in the future,” it said.
Also on Wednesday, a Sudanese military helicopter crashed while attempting to land at an airport in the eastern Qadaref region at the end of what the military said was a reconnaissance mission. The two-man crew, both flight captains, survived the crash, it added without giving more details. It was not immediately clear whether the helicopter crew’s mission was related in any way to the tension on the border with Ethiopia.
Ethiopia’s alleged aerial intrusion came one day after Addis Ababa warned Khartoum that it was running out of patience with its continued military build-up in the border region, an area at the centre of a decades-old territorial dispute.
The two countries have been sharply at odds over a Nile dam being built by Ethiopia.
Ethiopia warned Sudan that it was running out of patience with its continued military build-up in the border region, an area at the centre of a decades-old territorial dispute.
The area in question, Al Fashqa, is within Sudan’s international boundaries, but has long been settled by Ethiopian farmers, and late last year suffered weeks of clashes between forces from the two sides.
“The Sudanese side seems to be pushing in so as to inflame the situation on the ground,” Ethiopian foreign ministry spokesman Dina Mufti said on Tuesday. “Is Ethiopia going to start a war? Well, we are saying let’s work on diplomacy.”
On the same day, Sudan’s foreign ministry strongly condemned the militia raid in its eastern breadbasket Qadaref region and called on the international community to work for the cessation of such actions.
It blamed the raid on the Al Shifta militia, an outfit widely believed to enjoy the informal backing of the Ethiopian military.
Two Sudanese women were also missing after the Monday raid, the government said.
Monday’s raid was the latest in a series of violent incidents in recent weeks in the border region. Sudanese troops moved to retake border areas long held by Ethiopia and defended by government-linked militias, who also allegedly operate smuggling rings.
The fighting in Ethiopia’s Tigray region forced at least 50,000 of its residents to flee their homes and seek refuge in Sudan.
Ethiopia accuses the Sudanese military of infiltrating its territory, saying Sudan was seeking to take advantage of the conflict against separatist rebels in Tigray.
Sudan’s information minister Faisal Saleh denied the Ethiopian charges.
“We fear that these comments contain a hostile position towards Sudan,” Mr Saleh said.
“We ask of Ethiopia to stop attacking Sudanese territory and Sudanese farmers.”
He also said late on Tuesday that a joint committee set up last month to resolve differences over the border has so far failed to make any progress.
Sudan and Ethiopia have long had problems along their porous border, whose demarcation was determined in agreements reached early in the last century. The two countries are bound by close cultural ties but, in various conflicts since the 1950s, both sides have supported rebel groups fighting the other’s government.
The latest round of tension on the Sudanese-Ethiopian border, however, comes at a critical time in relations.
The latest round of tension on the border, however, comes at a critical time in relations.
Sudan is seething over Ethiopia’s recent announcement that it would go ahead with a second filling of the water reservoir behind the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, starting this summer.
According to Addis Ababa, this would happen regardless of whether an agreement on the operation of the dam was reached with downstream Sudan and Egypt. Ethiopia began the initial filling of the dam last summer, without giving prior notice to either Egypt or Sudan.
The nearly complete hydroelectric dam, Africa’s largest, is built less than 20 kilometres from the border with Sudan and on completion, is expected to generate 6,000 megawatts of power.
For Sudan, the absence of co-ordination on the operation of the dam could potentially spell disaster for its eastern region, through flooding and the disablement of its own hydroelectric dams on the Nile. For Egypt, the dam could mean a significant reduction in its vital share of the Nile’s waters, something Cairo says it will not tolerate.
Sudan and Egypt have been trying to persuade Ethiopia to enter a legally binding deal on the operation of the dam as well as agree on mechanisms for resolving future disputes. Ethiopia favours recommendations, rather than a binding deal.
The latest round of negotiations on the dam collapsed this week when Sudan insisted that experts from the African Union be given a greater role in drafting an agreement.
Ethiopia and Egypt rejected the suggestion, insisting the three nations must maintain ownership of the negotiating process.
– Eritreiske soldater brøt seg inn i huset mitt og plyndret alle eiendelene mine. Heldigvis skadet de meg ikke. Andre fikk en mye verre skjebne, forteller 25 år gamle «Maria» fra en krigsherjet by i Tigray-regionen. Ulike kilder rapporterer at regjeringssoldater har begått seksuelle overgrep.
Les mer om
Overgrep i “lukket område”
Eritreiske soldater plyndret huset
– Soldater begår voldtekter
– Hva om de voldtok henne?
Sivile klager på overgrep og plyndring
Ethiopia denies Sudan’s claim, which it said was a ‘dangerous escalation’ in the border dispute between both sides.
Sudan says an Ethiopian military aircraft entered its airspace in “a dangerous escalation” to a border dispute that has seen deadly clashes in recent weeks.
“In a dangerous and unjustified escalation, an Ethiopian military aircraft penetrated the Sudanese-Ethiopian borders,” Sudan’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Wednesday, adding that the move “could have dangerous ramifications and cause more tension in the border region”.
The ministry also warned Ethiopia against repeating “such hostilities”.
An Ethiopian military spokesman, General Mohamed Tessema, told the AFP news agency he had no “tangible information” on Sudan’s allegations and the situation at the border was “normal” on Wednesday.
Separately, a Sudanese military helicopter, loaded with weapons and ammunition, crashed on Wednesday shortly after taking off from an airport in an eastern province that borders Ethiopia, according to the state-run Sudan News Agency (SUNA).
“A military helicopter crashed at Wad Zayed airport in Gedarif State … when the crew tried to land the plane shortly after taking off,” SUNA reported.
The report said the plane caught fire after hitting the ground, adding that “all three members of the crew survived”.
We condemn this act of penetration by an Ethiopian Military aircraft to Sudanese territories which leads to increased tension in the region and impacts the sustainability of the bilateral diplomatic relations. https://t.co/3ItFKGAs5e
— Omer G. Ismail (@omerish) January 13, 2021
Tensions have been running high between the two countries over the Al-Fashaqa region, where Ethiopian farmers cultivate fertile land claimed by Sudan.
Al-Fashaqa region – which has seen sporadic clashes over the years – borders Ethiopia’s troubled Tigray region where deadly conflict erupted in November between Ethiopia’s federal and Tigray’s regional forces.
In December last year, Sudan accused Ethiopian “forces and militias” of ambushing its troops along the border, leaving four dead and more than 20 wounded.
Ethiopia said Sudanese military forces “organised attacks … using heavy machine guns” in December last year.
On Tuesday, Addis Ababa claimed Sudanese forces were pushing further into the border region and warned that while it “gives priority to peace”, it has “its limit”.
In response, Sudan’s information minister and government spokesman Faisal Mohamed Saleh said Khartoum did not want war with Ethiopia but its forces would respond to any aggression.
Khartoum also accused Ethiopian armed men of killing five women and a child on Monday in the area, calling it a “brutal aggression”.
The two sides held border talks last month, and Sudan declared its army had restored control over all border territory that had been taken over by Ethiopian farmers.
The border dispute comes at a sensitive time between the two countries, who along with Egypt have recently hit another impasse in talks over the massive Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile River.
Source: Al Jazeera and News Agencies
Age of victims of attack in Metekel zone in Benishangul-Gumuz region ranged between two and 45, says Ethiopian Human Rights Commission.
More than 80 civilians, including children as young as two years old, have been killed in the latest attack to afflict western Ethiopia, according to the country’s national human rights commission.
Aaron Maasho, spokesman and senior adviser for the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC), told Al Jazeera the massacre took place on Tuesday between 5am and 7am in the region of Benishangul-Gumuz, which borders Sudan and South Sudan.
“We received information that over 80 people died whose ages range from 2 to 45 years old,” he said from the capital, Addis Ababa.
There was no claim of responsibility and no immediate information about the identity of the attackers. “We can confirm that the perpetrators of the attack have not been apprehended by the authorities yet,” Maasho said.
The attack took place in an area called Daletti, in the Metekel zone of Benishangul-Gumuz, which has been plagued by recurring violence in recent months that has left hundreds of people dead.
Some 207 people were killed in one attack on December 23 alone.
Maasho said “thousands of people” have been displaced due to the continuing violence in Metekel.
“We call on the federal and regional authorities to strengthen the coordination and measures, including at the district level, to prevent similar attacks against civilians,” added the spokesman of the EHRC, a government-affiliated but independent body.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has struggled to impose order in Metekel or explain what is driving the violence, despite visiting the area in December and empowering a command post to take charge of security there.
Opposition politicians have described the violence in Metekel as ethnically motivated, alleging a targeted campaign by ethnic Gumuz armed groups against members of other ethnic groups in the area, including the Amhara, Ethiopia’s second-largest group.
One survivor of the latest attack, Ahmed Yimam, told AFP news agency on Wednesday that he had counted 82 bodies and said 22 people were injured.
“The attack was carried out mostly using knives although arrows and firearms were also used,” he said.
Worke Ahmed, 60, told Reuters news agency by telephone that men involved in Tuesday’s attack were armed and that he saw more than 100 of them. Some wore uniforms that he could not identify, he said.
“They burned my house and my brother’s house, with 200 cattle and 11 goats inside,” he said.
Africa’s second-most populous nation has been grappling with regular outbreaks of deadly violence since Abiy was appointed in 2018 and accelerated democratic reforms that loosened the state’s iron grip on regional rivalries.
Elections due this year have further inflamed simmering tensions over land, power and resources.
In a separate part of the country, Ethiopia’s military has been fighting rebels in the northern Tigray region for more than two months, in a conflict that has displaced some one million people.
The deployment of federal troops there has raised fears of a security vacuum in other restive regions.
Ethiopia is also experiencing unrest in the Oromia region and faces long-running security threats from Somali fighters along its porous eastern border.
SOURCE : AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES
Ethiopia’s security forces have “neutralized” 265 suspected Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) mutineers in Oromia regional state, state media outlet Fana Broadcasting Corporate (FBC) reported on Monday.
The 265 suspected insurgents were killed in military actions carried out in the past two months, FBC said.
Six suspected OLA insurgents and 87 of their accomplices have also been arrested during the military operations, it added.
The OLA is a breakaway faction of an ex-rebel group Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), also an opposition political party declaring to defend the rights of ethnic Oromos who account for around 35 percent of the country’s population.
Sudanese helicopter crashes near Ethiopian border, crew members survived.
A Sudanese military helicopter crashed in the border region with Ethiopia, all crew members survived, the official SUNA news agency reported on Wednesday.
The military helicopter crashed after taking off from Wad Zayed airport in the state of Gedarif, which borders Ethiopia.
“The crew tried to land the plane shortly after taking off but the plane hit the ground and set on fire,” the news agency said, adding that the three crew members survived.
Source: Anadolu Agency
ውዕሎ ሱዳን፣ ግብጺን ኢትዮጵያን ውጽኢት አልቦ ኮይኑ ተዛዚሙ አሎ።
ካብዝተፈላለያ ሚድያታት ብኢንግሊዝኛ ዝተጠመረት ነዛ ዜና አንብቢኩም ስርሒት ሱዳን ታይ ከምዝኾነ አስተውዕሉላ።
ኢትዮጵያ ብሶኒ አብ ዘዳለወቶን ብውድብ ሕቡራት አፍሪካ (AU) ዝተዋደደን ዋዕላ ሚንስቴራትን በዓል ሞያታትን አይሳተፍን ኢላ ዓንቂፋ ጸኒሓስ፣ ትማሊ ብውልቀ ምስ ኤዩ ተራኺባ ዘትያ። “ብሉጽ ግደ ክትጻወቲ አለኪ፣ ሙሉእ መፍትሒ ካባኺ ኢና ንጽበ” ዝብል ሓሳብ እያ ሒዛ ቀሪባ ነይራ።
አብ ናይ ሎማዓንቲ ልዝብ በዚ ሓሳብ ኢትዮጵያ ትኹን ዋላ ግብጺ ክስማዕምዓ ከምዘይኽእላ ሱዳን አጸቢቃ ትፈልጥ እያ። ምኽንያቱ ወሰንቲን ወነንቲን እቲ ሀፍቲ ማይ ንሕና እምበር ካሊእ ስለዘይኾነ ካልኦት ዘምጽእዎ መፍትሒ አይንቅበልን ከምዝብላ ፍሉጥ እዩ። ዳርጋ ሉአላዊነትካ ገፊፍካ ምሀብ እዩ። ብፍላይ ንኢትዮጵያ ድማ ትማሊ ምስ አሜሪካን ዓለም ባንክን ዝተፈጸመ ስሕተት ምድጋም ክኸውን እዩ።
ክልትኤን ሀገራት እዚ ዘይሕሰብ እዩ ምስበላ ድማ፣ ሱዳን ትርጉም አብ ዘይብሉ ዋዕላታት ሸኾርተት እንዳበልኩ ናይ ምንባር ዓቅሊ የብለይን ዝብል ጥንክር ዝበለ ቅዋም አንጸባሪቃ አላ። ውጻእ አይትበሎ ከምዝወጽእ ግበሮ ድዩ ዝብሀል?
ጸወታ ሱዳን ብሓጺሩ ክንግምገም ከለና “እቲ ተፈጢሩ ዘሎ አጋጣሚ ምጥቃም ይሕሸኒ፣ ክጽቀጥ እየ” ማለታ ይመስል።