Ethiopia, Eritrea forces engage in fresh border clash
By Tesfa-Alem Tekle
June 13, 2016 (ADDIS ABABA) – Ethiopian and Eritrean forces on Sunday engaged in fresh fighting along their heavily militarised common border, officials in Asmara said.
An Eritrean opposition website said the clashes took place shortly after midnight on Sunday morning and each side appears to be calling up reinforcement.
Asmara released a short statement accusing neighbouring Ethiopia of launching the attack.
However, the Ethiopian information and communications minister, Getachew Reda couldn’t confirm the border clashes, saying he had no knowledge about the report.
Ethiopian forces “has today, Sunday 12 June 2016, unleashed an attack against Eritrea on the Tsorona Central Front” the Eritrean ministry of information said in a statement.
The statement added that the purpose and ramifications of this attack are not clear.
“The Government of Eritrea will issue further statements on the unfolding situation” the short statement concluded.
The latest fighting comes, as Ethiopia in recent months warned Eritrea that it would take a proportional action unless the red Sea nation refrains from continued provocations.
In February, a group of Eritrean armed men cross borders in to Ethiopia and carried out mass kidnappings from a Tigray region in North Ethiopia bordering Eritrea.
However Eritrea freed the abductees after Ethiopia warned it would take military action to recue its citizens.
Last moth, Ethiopia said it has foiled what it described was a plot by Eritrean mercenaries to carryout a terror attack in the country.
Ethiopia has previously carried out military actions against targets inside Eritrea to what Addis Ababa says is a proportional measures to Eritrea’s continued aggression.
In 1998, the two neighbors fought a two-year long war over their disputed border which has claimed the lives of at least 70,000.
The row over their border remains unresolved and forces of both sides regularly engage in lower-scale skirmishes.
It is not yet clear on to what has triggered Sunday’s clashes but Ethiopia has routinely accused Eritrea of orchestrating a number of cross-border attacks using Ethiopian rebels it harbors, an accusation Asmara denies.
Abraham Belay, a political analyst based in Addis Ababa told Sudan Tribune that the quick statement issued by Eritrea is “nothing more than the usual systematic ways” of the country to divert the people’s attention.
“It is meant to deflect the public’s attention from the recent UN human rights commission report,” he said.
The United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in Eritrea on Wednesday disclosed that the commission found crimes that were committed against humanity.
Mike Smith, the chairman of the commission said crimes of enslavement, imprisonment, enforced disappearance, torture, persecutions, sexual and gender based violence, discrimination on the basis of religion and ethnicity and other inhuman crimes were documented.
The latest report said it has found no improvement in the rule of law further citing to the absence of a constitution, an independent judiciary or democratic institutions in Eritrea.
The commission said it has recommended to the UN Security Council to refer the situation in Eritrea to the prosecutor of the Hague-based International Criminal Court.
(ST)