The insurgents in Ethiopia have announced their withdrawal to the north.
"We want to open the door to humanitarian aid," said the spokesman for the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), Getachew Reda, on Monday the AFP news agency.
Therefore, the rebels would withdraw from the northern areas of Amhara and Afar.
So far, the rebels had said that the government's insistence on withdrawing from Afar and Amhara would make negotiations impossible.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's spokeswoman, Billene Seyoum, said the rebels' latest announcement was to cover up military defeats.
"The TPLF has suffered heavy defeats in the past few weeks," said Seyoum.
Therefore, the group is now declaring a "strategic withdrawal".
However, there are still retreat areas for the TPLF in Amhara.
On "other fronts" too, the rebels tried to rekindle the conflict.
Both sides are accused of serious atrocities
The UN Human Rights Council decided on Friday to launch an international investigation into possible human rights violations in the conflict in Ethiopia.
Since October, both sides had claimed significant land gains in the conflict.
At times, the TPLF declared that it was only 200 kilometers from the capital Addis Ababa.
The conflict between the central government over Prime Minister and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Abiy Ahmed (read more here) and the TPLF, which began about a year ago, has now spread from Tigray to other parts of the country.
All parties to the conflict are accused of serious human rights violations.
The human rights groups Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch reported last week that civilians were being tortured and arbitrarily arrested in the Amhara area.
Aid workers complained that bureaucratic obstacles made it impossible to come to the aid of the people in Amhara.
Around 400,000 people are said to be there before starving.
There are hardly any communication links into the conflict area, and journalists' access is limited.
The conflict between the government in Addis Ababa and the TPLF began in November 2020 with an offensive by government forces in Tigray.
Thousands of people have been killed and more than two million more displaced since then.
ngo / afp