Ethiopia said on Thursday it was making military preparations for any possible invasion by arch-foe and neighbour Eritrea, against whom it fought a devastating border war. ”It is deemed necessary to make the necessary military preparation for deterring a possible Eritrean invasion,” Prime Minister Meles Zenawi told Parliament.
A United Nations Security Council team and African Union officials on Saturday discussed the speedy deployment of a hybrid force in Darfur following Khartoum’s long-awaited nod for the peacekeepers. Khartoum had previously rejected attempts to send large numbers of UN peacekeepers to Darfur.
Sudan on Tuesday accepted the deployment of a hybrid African Union-United Nations force to its war-ravaged region of Darfur, according to a joint statement by the AU, UN and Sudan. It said the Sudanese government had ”accepted the joint proposals of the hybrid operation”.
Ethiopia has charged 55 opposition members with trying to launch a rebellion, a government prosecutor told said on Wednesday. More than one hundred opposition figures are already on trial, accused of plotting a coup after disputed 2005 elections.
Ethiopia said on Thursday it had detained 50 government and company officials for graft in one of the East African nation’s largest crackdowns. Ethiopia has a relatively clean image by the continent’s standards, managing to avoid the sort of major public corruption scandals plaguing neighbour Kenya, for example.
A blast ripped through a crowd in Ethiopia’s volatile Somali region on Monday, killing at least five people and setting off a stampede that saw up to six more die, according to witnesses and aid-workers. The Ethiopian government quickly blamed the attack on the Ogaden National Liberation Movement, separatist rebels who have been increasingly active in the remote east.
Two Ethiopian rebel groups have said they killed 157 troops in the east of the country this month, a claim denied by the government on Tuesday. The Oromo Liberation Front and the Ogaden National Liberation Front said they had launched several joint attacks in recent weeks.
China will spend -million to expand the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the pan-African body said on Monday. The new premises will stand on the site of an infamous prison where former dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam summarily executed by firing squad 60 top officials of the late Emperor Haile Selassie.
Ethiopia said on Saturday its troops backing Somali government forces killed nearly 1 000 insurgents in Mogadishu in March and April during some of the heaviest clashes in the city’s bloody history. Renegade Somali leaders living in Eritrea last month vowed to intensify insurgent attacks despite their retreat following the Mogadishu clashes.
African leaders are to meet in Ghana for an African Union summit at the end of next month to discuss ways of working towards a ”United States of Africa”, the bloc said in a statement on Friday. The summit, from June 25 to July 3, will be devoted to a ”grand debate on the union government”, the statement said. ”The ultimate goal … is full political and economic integration.”
Ethiopian rebels freed seven Chinese workers on Sunday who were seized in a deadly oilfield raid that was one of the worst attacks to date on Beijing’s growing interests in Africa. Officials said separatist gunmen killed 65 Ethiopians and nine other Chinese in last Tuesday’s pre-dawn assault on the exploration field in the barren eastern Ogaden region.
Ethiopian rebels who killed 74 people and seized seven Chinese workers in an attack on an oilfield said on Thursday they had no plans to hold the foreigners. But a London-based spokesperson for the Ogaden National Liberation Front, which claimed responsibility for the raid, gave no details about when the Chinese would be freed.
Ethiopia on Wednesday accused arch-foe Eritrea of supporting the rebels behind an attack on a remote Chinese-run oil field that killed 74 people, including nine Chinese workers. Eritrea immediately denied the claim — the latest in a string of accusations and counter-accusations between the rival neighbours.
Scores of gunmen attacked a Chinese-run oil field in Ethiopia on Tuesday, killing 74 people, including nine Chinese nationals, a government spokesperson said. ”It is a terrorist act, ordered by a terrorist alliance that includes ONLF,” said the prime minister’s spokesperson, Berekat Simon, referring to the Ogaden National Liberation Front separatist group.
The Ethiopian government on Monday again accused Eritrea of ”terrorist activities” aimed at destabilising the region and of orchestrating the kidnapping of a group of Europeans and their Ethiopian guides. In a statement, it ”urged the international community to condemn the ever-worsening terrorist activities of the Eritrean regime”.
The Ethiopian government acknowledged detaining 41 suspected international terrorists from 17 countries and said foreign investigators were given permission to question them, said an official statement published on Tuesday. The statement comes a week after an Associated Press investigation into the transfer of terror suspects from Kenya to Somalia and eventually to Ethiopia.
Ethiopia accused Eritrea on Thursday of arming anti-Ethiopian rebels and urged the United Nations to take action against its long-time Horn of Africa foe. Eritrean officials were not immediately available to comment, but always deny such allegations. Addis Ababa and Asmara have routinely fired harsh rhetoric at each other since a 1998 to 2000 border war.
Ethiopia on Friday called for international pressure on Eritrea, which it accuses of holding eight Ethiopians still missing after the release of five European captives this week. A British embassy group of five people was released on Tuesday in Eritrea, but eight Ethiopian drivers and guides accompanying them are still missing.
Ethiopia demanded on Wednesday that Eritrea free eight Ethiopians being held by kidnappers, saying they were victims of Eritrean ”terrorism”. Five Europeans were freed from the kidnapped group on Tuesday in Eritrea after a 12-day ordeal. The victims were seized in remote northern Ethiopia in a case which has stoked tensions between the Horn of Africa rivals.
The president of Ethiopia’s remote Afar region on Wednesday denied Eritrean accusations that local separatist rebels were responsible for abducting a British embassy group there for almost a fortnight. ”There are no rebel movements operating in the Afar region. Our soldiers monitor the area daily,” Ismail Ali Sero told Agence France-Presse by telephone.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi urged the kidnappers of five Europeans and eight locals on Monday to give them up, saying the hostages were not the original target of an attack in the remote north. ”I do not believe these people were targeted. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Meles said in his first public comments on the kidnap that took place 11 days ago.
Five Europeans and eight locals kidnapped in remote north Ethiopia are ”unharmed and safe” in the hands of Afar separatist rebels holding them over the border in Eritrea, an Afar leader said on Friday. The hostages were seized by an armed band eight days ago during a tour of the Afar region.
Ethiopian security forces scoured a remote north-eastern region on Monday in search of a group of kidnapped Europeans, including British embassy officials. Several British newspapers, quoting defence sources, said London had sent a Special Air Service team to Ethiopia.
Eritrea dismissed as ”baseless fabrication” on Sunday accusations by an Ethiopian official that Eritrean forces kidnapped a group of tourists, including Britons and Ethiopians, in a remote part of Ethiopia. The Britons went missing last week in the remote and inhospitable Afar area in the north-east of the country.
An Ethiopian administrator accused Eritrean forces of kidnapping a group of five Europeans and 13 Ethiopians in a remote part of Ethiopia, and taking them to a military camp near the Eritrean border. Britain sent a six-strong team of senior Foreign Office officials to Ethiopia to step up diplomatic efforts to free the foreigners.
Britain sent a six-strong team of senior Foreign Office officials to Ethiopia on Saturday to step up diplomatic efforts to free foreigners feared kidnapped in a remote area of the Horn of Africa country. Two groups of tourists were believed to have been kidnapped in a remote, inhospitable area of Ethiopia where separatist rebels operate.
Fifteen foreigners, including 11 French nationals, a Briton and an Italian, are believed to have been kidnapped in a remote and inhospitable area of Ethiopia where separatist rebels operate. ”A kidnapping or kidnappings did take place,” French Ambassador Stephane Gompertz told Reuters.
Ten French tourists were kidnapped in the remote desert of northern Ethiopia, a businessman and a tour operator said on Friday. The tourists were in a convoy of four vehicles in Dalol, 800km north-east of Addis Ababa, travelling to salt mines in the Afar region on Thursday, when they were kidnapped.
No image available
/ 28 February 2007
The African Union appealed on Wednesday for urgent funding to activate a peacekeeping mission aimed at stabilising Somalia, where an insurgency is brewing after a war over the New Year. The AU wants to put an 8 000-strong force of nine battalions in Somalia for six months, then hand over to the United Nations.
No image available
/ 26 February 2007
Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed on Monday said a deployment of Ugandan troops to Somalia, the first members of an 8 000-strong African Union peacekeeping force, should begin this week. "The AU is coming, the Ugandans are coming. My estimation is that they should be in Somalia for the first week of next month [which begins Thursday]," he said.
No image available
/ 15 February 2007
Former United States president Jimmy Carter on Wednesday announced distribution of thousands of insecticide-treated mosquito nets in impoverished Ethiopia, in a drive that could save up to 100Â 000 lives annually. The distribution is part of a partnership with Addis Ababa to distribute 20-million nets by July in the impoverished Horn of Africa nation.
No image available
/ 2 February 2007
Ethiopia foiled an Eritrean-backed attack that had targeted the African Union summit attended by about 40 heads of states in Addis Ababa this week, an Ethiopian police statement said on Friday. The two Horn of Africa neighbours are embroiled in a dispute over a border ruling by an independent boundary commission.