Eritrea told the UN Security Council on Friday that it had agreed to begin withdrawing its troops from Ethiopia’s Tigray region and publicly recognizing for the first time the country’s involvement in the conflict.
The inclusion in a letter to the 15-member council – and published online by the Eritrean Ministry of Information – comes a day after UN Secretary-General Mark Lowcock said the world body had seen no evidence of Eritrean troops withdrawing.
“As the looming serious threat has been largely counteracted, Eritrea and Ethiopia have agreed – at the highest levels – to begin withdrawing Eritrean forces while simultaneously reorienting Ethiopian contingents along the international border,” wrote Eritrean UN Ambassador Sophia Tesfamariam.
Eritrean forces have helped Ethiopian federal government troops fight Tigray’s former ruling party in a conflict that began in November. Until now, however, Eritrea has repeatedly denied its forces in the mountainous region.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed last month acknowledged the Eritrean presence, and the United Nations and the United States have demanded that Eritrean troops withdraw from Tigray.
“Neither the UN nor any of the humanitarian agencies we work with have seen evidence of withdrawal from Eritrea,” Lowcock told the Security Council on Thursday. “However, we have heard some reports of Eritrean soldiers now wearing Ethiopian defense force uniforms.”
The conflict has killed thousands of people and forced hundreds of thousands more from their homes in the region of about 5 million.
Lowcock said there were “widespread and confirmed reports of Eritrean guilt in massacres and killings.” Eritrean soldiers opened fire in an Ethiopian city on Monday, killing at least nine civilians and wounding more than a dozen others, a local official told Reuters.
The Security Council has been informed privately five times since the conflict began. According to Lowcock’s briefings on Thursday, he told the body that sexual violence is being used as a weapon of war, the humanitarian crisis has worsened in the last month and people are now starving to death in Tigray.
“We heard false allegations about the use of sexual violence and hunger as weapons,” Tesfamariam wrote on Friday. “The allegations of rape and other crimes against Eritrean soldiers are not only outrageous, but also a vicious attack on the culture and history of our people.”
She said the priority should be the provision of assistance to civilians in Tigray.
