Western powers, including the US, have condemned the strikes as an unacceptable risk to civilians.Ī strike Friday on Mekele forced a UN flight carrying 11 humanitarian personnel to turn back to the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, and the UN subsequently announced it was suspending its twice-weekly flights to the region. The escalation in aerial assaults coincides with ramped-up fighting in Amhara region, south of Tigray. The TPLF said the strikes were evidence of the government's disregard for civilian lives.
The UN said two strikes on Mekele on October 18 killed three children and wounded several other people. But on Sunday the military confirmed strikes further afield in Adwa to the north of the capital, and another along the 'western front' of the war at Mai Tsebri. Last week, Ethiopia's air force carried out eight strikes on targets which the government said were military in nature and aiding the TPLF. "So far, the information we have is that there was no casualties from the airstrike," the network reported.
TPLF-linked Tigrai TV reported that fighter jets bombed farmland in an area 25 kms east of Mekele. "(A) large number of the group's illegally recruited military personnel were taking military trainings at this center." Advertisement "A special-forces training centre for the terrorist group TPLF has been the target of today's airstrike," government spokeswoman Selamawit Kassa said. The latest strike was in Quiha, a town five kilometres (three miles) east of Mekele, which the TPLF recaptured from government forces in June and has held ever since.
The bombings in the northern and western parts of Tigray have drawn international censure, and disrupted UN access to the region where an estimated 400,000 people face famine-like conditions under a de-facto aid blockade. Tigray was pounded by near-daily aerial bombardments last week in a sign the military was stepping up its use of air power in the year-long war against the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF). Ethiopia's military on Tuesday launched another air strike in war-torn Tigray, hitting what a government official called a rebel training facility just outside the regional capital Mekele.
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