The government announced on Tuesday that Ethiopia’s national army has taken three towns in the Tigray area in the country’s north, where it has been fighting local forces intermittently for the past two years.
Thousands of people have died, millions have been displaced, and hundreds of thousands are on the verge of starvation as a result of the fight between the Tigray forces and the Ethiopian military and its allies, which includes Eritrean troops.
Ethiopia’s government media agency issued a statement claiming that “the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) has gained control of the towns of Shire, Alamata, and Korem without combat in urban areas.”
An inquiry for comment was not immediately answered by a spokeswoman for the Tigray military.
Shire, one of the largest cities in the area and home to tens of thousands of people who were forced to flee other places due to the fighting, was previously acknowledged by the Tigray government to be out of their control.
The United Nations human rights office expressed worry over some of the government troops’ indiscriminate airstrikes in Tigray.
The administration claimed in its statement that the national army was taking “utmost care” to safeguard civilians.
According to the statement, the government would work with humanitarian organizations to organize preparations for bringing aid and restoring services to regions it now controls.
The Tigray war is a result of long-standing conflicts over who should have control of Ethiopia as a whole and how authority should be distributed between the federal and regional governments.
Recent days have seen calls for an early ceasefire, the beginning of negotiations backed by the African Union, and the departure of Eritrean forces from Ethiopia from the United Nations, the European Union, and a number of senior US government officials.