ERITREA’S week-long truce with Ethiopia ended on Sunday morning, when Ethiopia attacked Alitena-Mereb, in the disputed Tsorona sector.
Ethiopia has confirmed the renewed hostilities, but downplayed them as mere “low level skirmishes”. Ethiopia also confirmed Eritrean claims of heavy artillery shelling on Saturday afternoon.
The weekend fighting followed a week of relative calm — despite both sides repeatedly accusing each other of bad faith in their differing interpretations of a peace plan drawn up by the Organisation of African Unity.
Both sides have accepted the plan, but Ethiopia is demanding that Eritrea first “withdraw unilaterally and unconditionally from remaining Ethiopian territory.”
Eritrea says this forms no part of the OAU plan, which calls for a ceasefire, the demilitarisation of the border, the deployment of peacekeepers and the neutral demarcation of the ill-defined border. –AFP.