Abiy Ahmed fires his army chief and other senior aides as reports of causalities in Tigray continue to grow.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has sacked his army chief, intelligence chief and foreign minister as the military resumes a five-day operation in the northern Tigray region with a new round of air strikes.
Abiy’s office made the announcement on its Twitter feed on Sunday and gave no reason for the changes as the reported number of soldiers wounded in the conflict continued to rise.
It was said that Deputy Prime Minister Demeke Mekonnen had been appointed Foreign Minister and Birhanu Jula had been promoted from Deputy Army Chief to Army Chief of Staff.
Abiy also appointed Temesgen Tiruneh, who was president of the Amhara region, as the new chief of intelligence.
The Prime Minister is following a military campaign he announced early Wednesday morning, despite international requests for dialogue with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) to avoid civil war.
In a report on Saturday, the United Nations said nine million people were at risk from the escalating conflict and warned that Wednesday’s government declaration on the state of emergency in Tigray was blocking food and other relief supplies.
Tigrayans dominated Ethiopian politics for decades until Abiy took office in 2018. They fight against his efforts to reduce their influence.
Reports of causalities
Meanwhile, a medical officer told AFP that 98 government soldiers had been treated for gunshot wounds at a hospital in the neighboring Amhara region. This is the latest indication that the fighting has been intense.
Abiy and military leaders have touted the successes of Ethiopian soldiers against forces loyal to the TPLF, but a communications failure in the region has made it difficult to verify their accounts.
An Ethiopian military plane bombed a missile and artillery station next to the airport in the capital Mekelle of the Tigray region on Sunday. One military and two diplomatic sources told Reuters news agency that it was not immediately clear what was destroyed in the bombing.
According to the sources, the plane left a military base in the city of Bahir Dar in Amhara.
The new army chief Birhanu told a state newspaper on Sunday that the army had control of several cities near the Eritrean border, including Dansha and Shire, but did not say when the army occupied those areas.
Due to the communications failure in the area, it was impossible to review the report.
Reports of dead and wounded soldiers have surfaced in Amhara in recent days, where a humanitarian worker said three died on Saturday and 35 received treatment, according to AFP. On Friday, 105 injured and five dead were reported in the region.
Abiy spoke on Saturday with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, who “offered his good offices”.
According to the UN spokesman, Guterres also spoke to the head of the African Union, Moussa Faki Mahamat, and the Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok in his capacity as chairman of the regional Africa group IGAD.
Experts have raised concerns that the conflict could not only break up Ethiopia, but also reverberate across the region and involve external forces.
“This could be the start of a civil war, but that is not certain,” said Martin Plaut, a longtime political observer in the Horn of Africa. “The situation in Tigray is one of many crises in the country, but it could worsen as it involves other Ethiopian regions while threatening neighboring Sudan and Eritrea.”
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