Ethiopian air strikes
- The Bulletin Buzz
- Nov 16, 2020
- 2 min read
Article written, website edited by Misaki Tomiyama
Credits to Google maps, Edits made
On 6th November, Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Abiy Ahmed claimed that his government had dropped an airstrike targeting the Tigray People's Liberation Front’s (TPLF- a military party in the northern Tigray state) military base- “completely destroyed rockets and other heavy weapons''. Many people feared that this attack might have negative effects on the neighbouring countries and states, but Prime Minister Abuy Ahmed says that the operation has a clear, limited and achievable goal. The airstrikes on Tigray prevented any retaliation attack from them.
According to the local media, the targets of the airstrike were the rocket weapons in and around Mekelle (the state capital), furthermore, this made it impossible for the Tigray states to carry out a retaliatory attack.
In 2018, Abiy Ahmed was appointed as prime minister to help calm the anti-government protest that has been going on for months. He later won the Nobel Prize, for his efforts to achieve peace, and his ability to resolve the border conflict with Eritrea. However, the TPLF felt as if they were marginalised, and withdrew from the government coalition- a body that is formed when different political parties choose to work together to regulate the country.
The two sides further clashed in September, when the central government made a decision to ban the elections due to the spread of the coronavirus. TPLF thinks that prime minister Abiy Ahmed hadn’t postponed the election because of the coronavirus, but for his own benefit, so he can stay in the office longer. They have been greatly defying the central government, and despite their ban, the leaders of the Tigray state, carried out an election. The central government stopped funding the TPLF executive, and started funding the local government instead as a result. This piqued a lot of the leaders in the TPLF, and many argue that this conflict might spread to other parts of Ethiopia, and lead to a civil war outbreak.
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