Ethiopia’s defiant Tigray regional government said Saturday it fired rockets at two airports in the neighboring Amhara region as a deadly conflict threatens to spread into other parts of Africa’s second-most populous country.

The Tigray regional government said in a statement on Tigray TV that such strikes would continue “unless the attacks against us stop.” Ethiopia’s federal government said the airports in Gondar and Bahir Dar were damaged in the strikes late Friday, asserting that Tigray regional forces were “repairing and utilizing the last of the weaponry within its arsenals.”

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The Ethiopian Army has taken control of an important airport in the Tigray region near the Eritrean border, following the outbreak of violence in the northern part of the country.

According to Fana TV, “the Ethiopian National Defense Force took complete control of the Humera Airport in light of the government’s continued military response to the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front,” the group that leads the government in the Tigray region.

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More than 50 people have been beheaded in northern Mozambique by militant Islamists, state media report.

The militants turned a football pitch in a village into an “execution ground”, where they decapitated and chopped bodies, other reports said.

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Representatives of Libya’s two warring factions will today begin talks to reach a political solution to the Second Libyan Civil War.

The internationally-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) and the Tobruk-based House of Representatives (HoR) are expected to reinforce the ceasefire signed on October 23 and to work toward a framework for establishing and electing members of a new national government in the next 18 months.

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Ethiopia’s air force bombed military targets in the restive northern Tigray region, escalating a conflict in Africa’s second-most populous nation that risks turning into a full-blown civil war.

The air strikes targeted arms depots in the Tigrayan capital, Mekelle, and other locations around the city, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said on state television Friday. The military acted on information that the region’s ruling Tigray People’s Liberation Front planned to use rockets against federal forces and its assault on the region will continue, he said.

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Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has ordered a military offensive, after an army base was taken over by forces loyal to the regional government of Tigray.

Mr Abiy accused the region’s ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), of launching the attack.

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Clashes between two Ethiopian states that have long disputed their border have killed at least 27 people, a government statement said, as the country faces surging ethnic violence.

The 27 were killed “due to conflicts along the borders of Somali and Afar”, the statement said. Militias from the two eastern states have clashed before over their disputed boundaries.

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