Africa-Press. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has strongly criticized the **Eritrea**n army for atrocities committed during the two-year war in the northern Tigray region, which ended in 2022.
Eritrean forces fought alongside the **Ethiopia**n army against Tigrayan fighters to seize control of Tigray, which borders Eritrea. In a speech to parliament, Abiy Ahmed acknowledged for the first time that Eritrean troops carried out a massacre of civilians in Aksum—allegations Eritrea had previously denied despite reports of mass killings over two days in November 2020.
This admission marks a new turn in the volatile relationship between the two Horn of Africa neighbors, which has swung between rapprochement and hostility. Abiy Ahmed was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for ending two decades of military stalemate with Eritrea stemming from a border dispute.
Although ties strengthened during the Tigray war, they have recently deteriorated sharply over a dispute involving the Red Sea, which landlocked Ethiopia seeks to access via Eritrea.
Ethiopia’s foreign ministry has recently accused Eritrea of shifting its allegiances in Tigray, raising fears of renewed conflict. The African Union brokered a deal between the Ethiopian government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front to end the brutal war in November 2022, but Eritrea was not a signatory to the Pretoria Agreement.
At the time, Asmara opposed the truce, arguing it should not have been concluded before the total defeat of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. All sides have been accused of atrocities during the conflict, with some of the worst abuses attributed to Eritrean forces. Much of the region was cut off during the war, and journalists were denied access.
Eyewitnesses described how hundreds of unarmed civilians—many of them men and boys—were killed by Eritrean soldiers during house-to-house raids on November 28 and 29, 2020. On November 30, 2020, Abiy Ahmed told parliament that “no civilians were killed.”
However, speaking to parliament on Tuesday, the prime minister acknowledged mass killings of youths by Eritrean soldiers. He added that as allied forces began taking control of Tigray’s cities, Eritrean troops demolished homes, looted property, destroyed factories, and seized machinery in places such as Adwa, Aksum, Adigrat, and Shire. Abiy Ahmed said he sent envoys to Eritrea during the conflict, urging its government to halt the destruction and killings.
His remarks came as passenger flights resumed Tuesday morning between Addis Ababa and cities in Tigray after a five-day suspension.
Flights had been canceled due to clashes between federal forces and Tigrayan fighters in a disputed area in western Tigray, raising fears of renewed conflict. An African Union envoy estimated that around 600,000 people were killed during the two-year Tigray war.
