Longtime foes Ethiopia and Eritrea could be headed towards war, officials in a restive Ethiopian region at the centre of the tensions have warned, risking another humanitarian disaster in the Horn of Africa.
Direct clashes between two of Africa’s largest armies would signal the death blow for a historic rapprochement for which Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 and could draw in other regional powers, analysts said.
It would also probably create another crisis in a region where aid cuts have complicated efforts to assist millions affected by internal conflicts in Sudan, Somalia and Ethiopia.
“At any moment war between Ethiopia and Eritrea could break out,” Gen Tsadkan Gebretensae, a vice-president in the interim administration in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, wrote in Africa-focused magazine the Africa Report on Monday.
A 2020-2022 civil war in Tigray between the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and Ethiopia’s central government killed hundreds of thousands of people.