A burning tank stands near the city of Adwa, Tigray region, Ethiopia, on March 18, 2021. REUTERS / Baz Ratner
Eritrea told the United Nations Security Council on Friday that it had agreed to withdraw its troops from the Tigray region of Ethiopia, recognizing for the first time the country’s involvement in the conflict.
The admission in a letter to the 15-member council – and posted online by the Eritrean Ministry of Information – comes a day after UN Deputy Chief of Staff Mark Lowcock said the world body had seen no evidence that Eritrean troops had withdrawn not.
“As the looming serious threat has largely been thwarted, Eritrea and Ethiopia have agreed to tackle at the highest levels the withdrawal of Eritrean forces and the simultaneous redeployment of Ethiopian contingents along the international border,” said UN Ambassador Sophia Tesfamariam of Eritrea wrote.
Eritrean troops have helped Ethiopian federal government troops fight Tigray’s former ruling party in a conflict that began in November. Until now, however, Eritrea has repeatedly denied that its forces are in the mountainous region.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed last month acknowledged the Eritrean presence and demanded that the United Nations and the United States withdraw Eritrean troops from Tigray.
“Neither the UN nor any of the humanitarian agencies we work with have seen evidence of Eritrean withdrawal,” Lowcock told the Security Council on Thursday. “However, we have heard some reports of Eritrean soldiers now wearing Ethiopian army uniform.” read more
The conflict killed thousands of people and forced hundreds of thousands more out of their homes in the region of 5 million.
Lowcock said there were “widespread and confirmed reports of Eritrean guilt in massacres and murders.” Eritrean soldiers opened fire on an Ethiopian city on Monday, killing at least nine civilians and wounding more than a dozen others, a local government official told Reuters.
The Security Council has been privately briefed five times since the start of the conflict. According to Lowcock’s briefs on Thursday, he told the body that sexual violence was being used as a weapon of war, the humanitarian crisis had worsened over the past month and people were now starving in Tigray.
“We have heard false accusations of ‘using sexual violence and hunger as a weapon,'” Tesfamariam wrote on Friday. “The accusations of rape and other crimes against Eritrean soldiers are not only outrageous, but also a cruel attack on the culture and history of our people.”
She said the priority should be to provide assistance to civilians in Tigray.
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