Four days after he announced he would lead the army from there, a state-affiliated Ethiopian TV channel has broadcast footage purportedly showing the country s Nobel peace prize-winning prime minister on the battlefront of the country's year-long war against Tigray forces.
Abiy Ahmed claimed in the footage that the war was being conducted with a high level of success and referred to locations on the border between the country's Amhara and Afar regions, which neighbour Tigray.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in the war that occurred between Ethiopian forces and Tigray forces in November 2020, which had dominated the national government for a long time before Abiy took office in 2018. The US and others told their citizens to leave immediately, as the government declared a state of emergency this month as Tigray fighters moved closer to the capital, Addis Ababa.
Foreign media have been barred from Tigray for much of the war, with communications links severed.
Late on Thursday Ethiopia s government issued an order to restrict media reporting of the war, forbidding the sharing of non-official information on military-related movements, battlefront results and situations. It strongly warned against calls for the formation of a transitional government. It said security forces would take measures against violators, but it didn't elaborate.
Mediation efforts by the US and the African Union in pursuit of a ceasefire and talks have made little progress. There have been atrocities committed by all sides, even though Ethiopian forces and their allies from neighbouring Eritrea have been blamed for most of the abuses, according to the war in which witnesses described gang-rapes, mass expulsions and deliberate starvation.
The war has caused a huge humanitarian crisis in Africa's second most populous country, with 6 million people in the Tigray region being affected by a months-long government blockade. Many in the neighbouring Amhara and Afar regions remain beyond the reach of aid as the Tigray forces fight their way to Ethiopia s capital.
They say they are pressing the government to lift the blockade, but they also say they want Abiy out, by force if needed.
Today 9.4 million people in northern Ethiopia are living their worst nightmare, World Food Programme spokesman Tomson Phiri told reporters in Geneva on Friday.
The United Nations agency also said 35 aid trucks had arrived in the Tigray capital, the first such aid to arrive in the region since October 18 when Ethiopia s military resumed airstrikes against the regional capital. A hundred aid trucks are needed each day to meet the urgent needs in Tigray, the UN said.
Abiy was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 after announcing political reforms to the repressive government and restoring relations with neighbouring Eritrea after years of conflict. His government allowed Eritrean soldiers to enter Tigray and fight alongside Ethiopian troops.