Ethiopian Drones Strike Eritrean Troops Inside Tigray
Military vehicles crossed from Eritrea into Tigray on Wednesday and reached Adigrat, forty kilometres south, according to witnesses, a militia commander and the monitoring group Acled. Ethiopian government drones then struck the Eritrean troops on Wednesday evening and again on Thursday morning. Eritrea has neither confirmed nor denied the incursion.
Eritrea’s information minister Yemane Ghebremeskel answered the question by refusing it: “We are not in the business of refuting wild allegations or narratives.” He had already accused Ethiopia of “incessantly beating the drums of war” over what Addis Ababa calls sovereign access to the sea, and of repackaging that agenda as self-defence. Ethiopia’s foreign ministry says it “stands ready to defend its sovereignty, territorial integrity, and core national interests” and that any discussion of regional maritime security “must account for Ethiopia’s legitimate interests and its enduring connection to the Red Sea”. Magnus Taylor of Crisis Group sets out the worst case plainly: Abiy Ahmed “might try to solve all his problems at the same time, by invading Eritrea, possibly a regime change move and also a land grab for the Red Sea port, and also solving his problem with Tigray at the same time. It’s a very ambitious military agenda, though.” The sequence behind this is fast: the Tigray People’s Liberation Front launched its offensive on 23 September and the allied Tigray Peace Force took Mekelle on 4 October. The 2020 to 2022 civil war killed between 300,000 and 800,000 civilians on British government estimates, and Mr Abiy won the Nobel peace prize in 2019 for making peace with Eritrea. With Iran constraining traffic through Hormuz, Red Sea access is worth more than it was.