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Ethiopian federal troops are closing in on Tigray’s capital of Mekelle, Redwan Hussein, the government spokesperson for the state of emergency task force, told CNN on Wednesday.
As the fighting between Ethiopian and Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) soldiers rages in the region for a second week, Redwan said that national defense forces have now taken control of Shire, northwest of Mekelle, and Alamata, south of the city.
Six people died on Tuesday in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu when a suicide bomber blew himself up in a restaurant near a police academy, a police spokesman and a witness said.
It was unclear who was behind the attack.
Rebellious forces from Ethiopia’s Tigray region fired rockets at the airport in Eritrea’s capital Asmara on Saturday evening, their leader said on Sunday, confirming earlier reports of a major escalation in a 12-day old conflict in Ethiopia.
“Fighting is still continuing on several fronts” in Ethiopia, Debretsion Gebremichael told Reuters in a text message.
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.”
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.