Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on Tuesday urged Tigray rebels to surrender, saying government forces were closing in on victory a week after pledging to lead military operations at the front.
“The youth of Tigray are falling like leaves. Knowing that they are defeated, they are led by someone who has no vision or a clear plan,” said Abiy, Nobel laureate of peace 2019, in a commentary broadcast on state media.
“They should surrender today to the Ethiopian National Defense Force, special forces, militias and people,” said the Ethiopian prime minister.
Tuesday’s video is the latest in a series showing Abiy in uniform with soldiers in what appears to be the Afar region, the scene of fighting in recent weeks, with Tigrayan rebels trying to take control of a strategic road connecting Djibouti to the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.
State media claimed on Sunday that the military was in control of the Afar lowland town of Chifra, and Mr. Abiy said on Tuesday that these successes would be repeated on the Western Front in the Amhara region. .
“The enemy has been defeated. We won an unthinkable victory with the Eastern Command in one day. Now in the West we will repeat this victory,” he said on Tuesday.
Fears of a rebel march on the capital prompted the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Greece and other countries to ask their citizens to leave Ethiopia as soon as possible.
On Monday, a spokesperson for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Tigray (TPLF) called the Ethiopian military deployment a “circus” involving “grotesque war games”.
War erupted between the two camps in November 2020 after months of tension. Abiy sent troops to Ethiopia’s northernmost region of Tigray to overthrow the TPLF in response, he said, to TPLF attacks on army camps.
According to United Nations estimates, the fighting has left thousands dead, displaced more than two million people and plunged hundreds of thousands of others into conditions bordering on famine.
Source: Seychelles News Agency