Drone strike on Ethiopia's Tigray capital wounds 13: hospital official

Drone strike on Ethiopia's Tigray capital wounds 13: hospital official. [File, Standard]

A drone strike on the Tigrayan capital Mekelle wounded at least 13 people, including five children, on Thursday, a hospital official told AFP, amid fears Ethiopia's troubled northern region could be sliding back towards war.

Federal and Tigrayan forces have massed on either side of the northern state's border in recent months, with both sides accusing the other of attempting to start a new conflict, following the devastating 2020-2022 war that claimed at least 600,000 lives.

Amanuel Assefa, vice president of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), which controls the state, told AFP the drone hit Mekelle early on Thursday.

"There was a drone strike today in the city. It targeted a residential area... I don't have details on casualties yet," he said.

An AFP journalist in Mekelle said residents had confirmed the strike.

"Thirteen people injured in a drone strike were brought to our hospital. Three of them sustained serious injuries," Birhanu Hailemariam, emergency ward coordinator at Ayder Referral Hospital, told AFP.

"The patients range in age from two to 60 years old... Five of the injured are children and seven are women," he added.

TPLF leader later told AFP that a second strike was carried out near Mekelle University, without providing further details.

The Ethiopian federal army did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment.

The strikes came two days after another drone attack near Mekelle that Tigrayan authorities blamed on Addis Ababa but which reportedly had no casualties.

Harsher means

"This is likely an attempt to take out high-level targets of the TPLF; I don't believe it is an indiscriminate attack on civilian residences," Kjetil Tronvoll, a regional specialist at Oslo New University College, told AFP.

"It tells that the government is ready to use harsher means against the TPLF... the situation has been serious for months now," Tronvoll added.

The TPLF effectively ruled the whole of Ethiopia for nearly 30 years until Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed rose to power in 2018.

His government barred the TPLF from political activity last year, but it remains all-powerful in Tigray, with its own military.

At the end of April, the group said it had reinstated a regional parliament that Addis Ababa considers illegitimate.

On August 1, fighting pitted federal forces against TPLF troops in Tigray, near the border with Sudan, according to the TPLF.

The federal government has not commented on the incident.

Home to around six million people before the war, Tigray remains deeply scarred by the conflict. Around one million people are still displaced and the region is struggling financially after federal subsidies were cut.

The region did not take part in nationwide elections on June 1, which Abiy won.