Forces from the northern Ethiopian region of Tigray launched a major offensive against the federal government yesterday, a senior Ethiopian official said, shattering a four-year-old peace deal and threatening a wider regional conflict.
Tigray’s leaders said in a statement they had entered a ‘defensive’ war to counter aggression by the federal government.
A civil war that began in 2020 between the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and federal forces resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths before the Pretoria Agreement, brokered by the African Union, was signed in November 2022.
The new hostilities follow months of growing animosity between the two sides, capped by Sunday’s announcement that the TPLF had formed an alliance with six other armed groups from across Ethiopia aimed at overthrowing Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government.
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