Dead bodies seen โeverywhere on the streetsโ of town in Afar region as Al Jazeera gains exclusive access to front line of escalating conflict.
Ethiopiaโs state-run broadcaster has said government forces were in control of the town of Chifra in Afar region, their first major seizure since Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said earlier this week he would head to the front lines to lead federal troops against fighters from the northern Tigray region.
Tens of thousands of people have died and millions displaced since the war between Ethiopian federal and allied troops, and the Tigrayan forces, broke out in November 2020. The conflict has also caused a massive humanitarian crisis, with hundreds of thousands of people facing famine.
The Tigrayan forces captured Chifra, on the border between the northern Afar and Amhara regions, after fighting intensified last month.
โEthiopian Defense Forces and Afar Special Forces have controlled Chifra,โ the Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation said on its Twitter account on Sunday, without providing further details.
There was no immediate comment by the Tigrayan forces.
โDead bodies everywhereโ
Much of northern Ethiopia is under a communications blackout and access for journalists is heavily restricted, making battlefield claims difficult to corroborate. Al Jazeera, however, was able to gain exclusive access to Chifra, the first international news organisation to do so.
Reporting from โthe heartโ of the town, Al Jazeera Arabicโs correspondent Mohammed Taha Tewekel said the Tigrayan forces โwere driven out of this strategic areaโ by pro-government militia from the Afar region, but also noted โgunfire could be heard from all directionsโ for hours.
โIt [Chifra] has been the epicentre of military operations during the past 40 days,โ Tewekel said during a live broadcast, with gunfire ringing in the background.
โThe scenes we witnessed are very appalling. Dead bodies everywhere on the streets. It is living proof of the ferociousness of the fighting. There are clear signs of the lack of humanity in this conflict. The townโs commercial shops were totally destroyed, even the mosques were not spared. All the residents have fled for their lives and the town has turned into military barracks for the Afari fighters,โ he added.
The Afari fighters โhave seized the cityโ and are now advancing towards the towns of Bati and Kombolcha, the correspondent said.
Chifra is west of the town of Mille, which Tigrayan forces have been trying to capture for weeks, because it lies along the highway linking landlocked Ethiopia to Djibouti, the Horn of Africaโs main port.
State-affiliated Fana Broadcasting reported on Friday that Abiy was on the front line with the army fighting the Tigrayan forces in Afar.
โThe morale of the army is very exciting,โ he said in the remarks broadcast on Friday, promising to capture Chifra โtodayโ.
After months of tension, Abiy in November 2020 sent troops to Tigray to remove the regionโs governing party, the Tigray Peopleโs Liberation Front (TPLF) in response to what the government said was an attack on federal army camps. The TPLF, which dominated the federal government for nearly three decades until Abiy took office in 2018,ย saidย federal forces and its allies launched a โcoordinated attackโ against it.
The prime minister promised a swift victory and government forces seized Tigrayโs capital, Mekelle, in late November. By June, however, the Tigrayan forces had retaken most of the region and pushed into the neighbouring Amhara and Afar regions.
The Tigrayan forces recently reported major territorial gains, claiming this week to have seized a town just 220km (135 miles) from the capital, Addis Ababa.
International alarm about the escalating conflict has deepened, with several foreign countries urging their citizens to leave as mediation attempts by the United Nations and the United States have so far failed to yield any results.
SOURCE:ย AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES
