Ethiopia: Tigray rebels agree to peace talks

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The conflict, which has been smoldering since 2020, is forcing people to flee their homes

Photo: Eduardo Soteras / AFP

The Tigray rebels in north African Ethiopia have agreed to start peace talks with the central government in Addis Ababa.

This emerges from a statement by the de facto president of the Tigray region, Debretsion Gebremichael, on Wednesday evening.

The central government had previously declared that it wanted to take part in the peace talks led by the African Union (AU).

They are scheduled to begin in South Africa on October 8th.

Fighting flared up again in August

The peace talks are to be chaired by AU High Representative to the Horn of Africa and former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo.

Serious clashes have broken out again between the military and the Tigray rebels (TPLF) in Ethiopia since August.

An agreed armistice lasted less than five months.

Most recently, the rebels in Tigray accused Eritrea of ​​launching a major offensive.

The TPLF has been demanding more autonomy for its ethnic group in the conflict that has been going on since November 2020.

Human rights organizations complain that serious war crimes and ethnic cleansing have taken place on both sides.

For almost a year, Nobel Peace Prize winner Abiy also maintained a blockade of Tigray with the aim of starving the region and cutting off aid supplies.

The war over Tigray is already "the worst catastrophe in the world," said recently the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who himself comes from Tigray.

According to the World Health Organization, around 5.2 million of the more than seven million people in Tigray are dependent on humanitarian aid.

The rebels had already signaled in mid-September that they wanted to hold peace talks.

In the meantime, however, heavy fighting had broken out again in the region.

muk/dpa