DM Monitoring
LONDON: Britain urged all parties to pull back from the violence in Tigray and allow humanitarian workers access to the area on Thursday, after the Ethiopian government declared a unilateral ceasefire earlier this week.
“We welcome the Government of Ethiopia’s announcement of a humanitarian ceasefire in Tigray and urge all other parties to the conflict to make similar announcements,” a spokesperson for the Foreign Office said. “The violence must now stop and unfettered humanitarian access granted. Eritrean forces should also leave Tigray.”
Meanwhile, the Ethiopian government on Thursday urged Tigrayan rebels to join a unilateral ceasefire in their conflict as aid agencies struggled to reach hundreds of thousands of people facing famine. The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the former rulers of Ethiopia’s Tigray region – said on Monday they were back in control of the regional capital Mekelle after nearly eight months of fighting.
The government declared a unilateral ceasefire but the TPLF dismissed it as a joke and hostilities persisted on Thursday.
A bridge over the Tekeze River near the northern town of Shire has been destroyed and as a result getting aid to the war-ravaged region would be “even more severely hampered than before, the International Rescue Committee said.
