A burnt tank is standing near the city of Adwa, Tigray region, Ethiopia, March 18, 2021. REUTERS / Baz Ratner
Eritrea told the United Nations Security Council on Friday that it has agreed to withdraw its troops from the Ethiopian Tigray region, publicly acknowledging the country’s involvement in the conflict for the first time.
The confession in a letter to the 15-member council – and posted online by Eritrea’s Ministry of Information – comes a day after UN chief of defense Mark Lowcock said the world organization had seen no evidence of Eritrean soldiers withdrawing.
“As the impending grave threat has been largely thwarted, Eritrea and Ethiopia have agreed at the highest level to begin the withdrawal of Eritrean forces and the simultaneous redeployment of Ethiopian contingents along the international border,” wrote Eritrea’s UN Ambassador Sophia Tesfamariam.
Eritrean forces have helped Ethiopian federal government forces fight the former Tigray ruling party in a conflict that started in November. Until now, however, Eritrea has repeatedly denied that its armed forces are located in the mountainous region.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed acknowledged the Eritrean presence last month and the United Nations and the United States have demanded that Eritrean troops withdraw from Tigray.
“Neither the UN nor any of the humanitarian organizations we work with have seen evidence of Eritrea’s withdrawal,” Lowcock told the Security Council on Thursday. “However, we have heard some reports of Eritrean soldiers now wearing Ethiopian Defense Force uniforms.” read more
The conflict has killed thousands of people and displaced hundreds of thousands more from their homes in the region of 5 million.
Lowcock said there were “widespread and confirmed reports of Eritrean culpability for massacres and murders.” Eritrean soldiers opened fire in an Ethiopian city on Monday, killing at least nine civilians and injuring more than a dozen others, a local government official told Reuters.
The Security Council has been privately briefed five times since the beginning of the conflict. According to Lowcock’s briefing notes on Thursday, he told the body that sexual violence is being used as a weapon of war, that the humanitarian crisis has worsened over the past month and that people are now starving in Tigray.
“We heard false accusations of ‘using sexual violence and hunger as a weapon,'” Tesfamariam wrote Friday. “The allegations of rape and other crimes against Eritrean soldiers are not only outrageous but also a brutal attack on the culture and history of our people.”
She said providing assistance to civilians in Tigray should be the priority.
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