An airstrike that hit the Tigray region in Ethiopia Thursday killed six people and wounded 20 others, according to Tigray spokesman Nahusenay Belay. The video above shows the damage left by the airstrike. It followed several similar attacks last week, and serves as the latest in a years-long war between Ethiopia and Tigray.
Ethiopian Government spokesman Legesse Tulu said the airstrike targeted a site used by Tigray forces to make and repair weapons in Tigray’s capital Mekele. However, Belay denied this, saying the strike hit a “civilian residence.” Belay said three children were among the dead.
This disagreement of where Thursday’s airstrike was targeted has been a theme for the recent attacks in Ethiopia. Last Friday, Ethiopian military airstrikes forced a United Nations humanitarian flight to abandon its landing in Mekele.
“We’ve had flights turned around because of weather,” Gemma Connell, head of the U.N.’s regional humanitarian office for southern and eastern Africa, told reporters. “But this is the first time we’ve had a flight turn around, at least to my knowledge, in Ethiopia because of airstrikes on the ground.”
Ethiopia’s government has asserted that the latest airstrikes have been confined to military targets, but Tigray forces have asserted that civilian facilities including factories and a clinic have been targeted instead. The airstrikes have captured international attention, including from the United States.
“We do remain gravely concerned by the escalating violence, by the expansion of fighting in northern Ethiopia and in regions throughout the country,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said after Friday’s airstrike. “Escalating fighting is so concerning, in large part because it undermines efforts that are critical to keep civilians safe and to deliver humanitarian relief to those Ethiopians in dire need.” Price urged both sides to “enter into negotiations without preconditions toward a sustainable cease fire”.
“A cease fire will help establish conditions for inclusive and credible dialog to find a political settlement to longstanding grievances that in many ways have led to this conflict,” Price said.
