A burnt tank is located near the town of Adwa, Tigray Region, Ethiopia, March 18, 2021. REUTERS / Baz Ratner
Eritrea told the United Nations Security Council on Friday that it had agreed to begin withdrawing troops from the Tigray region of Ethiopia, publicly acknowledging for the first time the country’s involvement in the conflict.
Admission in a letter to the 15-member council – and posted online by the Eritrean Ministry of Information – comes a day after UN Assistance Chief Mark Lowcock said the world body had seen no evidence that Eritrean soldiers had withdrawn. .
“As the approaching serious threat has been largely prevented, Eritrea and Ethiopia have agreed – at the highest levels – to commit to the withdrawal of Eritrean forces and the simultaneous redistribution of Ethiopian contingents along the international border,” the ambassador wrote. UN of Eritrea, Sophia Tesfamariam.
Eritrean forces have helped Ethiopian federal government troops fight Tigray’s former ruling party in a conflict that began in November. However, so far Eritrea has repeatedly denied that its forces are in the mountainous region.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed last month acknowledged the Eritrean presence, and the United Nations and the United States called for the withdrawal of Eritrean troops from Tigray.
“Neither the UN nor any of the humanitarian agencies we work with have seen evidence of Eritrean withdrawal,” Lowcock told the Security Council on Thursday. “However, I have heard some reports of Eritrean soldiers now wearing Ethiopian defense uniforms.” Read more
The conflict has killed thousands and forced hundreds of thousands more to withdraw from their homes in the region of 5 million.
Lowcock said there were “widespread and corroborated reports of Eritrean guilt in massacres and crimes.” Eritrean soldiers opened fire in an Ethiopian city on Monday, killing at least nine civilians and injuring more than a dozen others, a local government official told Reuters.
The Security Council has been privately informed five times since the conflict began. According to information notes from Lowcock on Thursday, he told the body that sexual violence is being used as a weapon of war, the humanitarian crisis has worsened in the last month and people are now starving in Tigray.
“I have heard false accusations about the use of sexual violence and hunger as a weapon,” Tesfamariam wrote on Friday. “The allegations of rape and other crimes against Eritrean soldiers are not only outrageous, but also a harsh attack on the culture and history of our people.”
She said the priority should be to provide assistance to civilians in Tigray.
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