Fighting erupted on Tuesday between rival forces in a refugee camp in Ethiopia’s war-torn Tigray, humanitarian sources told Agence France-Presse (AFP), after Tigrayan rebels launched a new offensive in the region.
The clashes erupted early in the morning in the Mai-Aini camp, which housed Eritrean refugees and deployed Tigrayan forces against Ethiopian troops and their allies in Amharic special forces, sources said, citing interviews with witnesses. There was no immediate word on accidents.
Several refugees reported that ammunition cartridges landed on the roof of their shelter, and some refugees from both Mai-Aini and the nearby Adi Harush camp have begun fleeing on foot south towards the Amhara region, sources said.
“There were battles inside the camp,” said a source. “Some refugees have started leaving the camps to the south.” By noon, fighting seemed to have subsided, with Tigrayan forces controlling much of the area, the source said.
The accounts could not be immediately confirmed due to network outages in the area, and a military spokesman did not respond to a request for comment. Two camps for Eritrean refugees further north, near the border with Eritrea, were destroyed earlier in the eight-month war between Ethiopian forces and Tigrayan rebels. The Eritreans are pre-war refugees who fled the regime in their homeland.
Tigray’s defense forces said they launched a new offensive in the region on Monday, pushing further west and south, two weeks after the Ethiopian government declared a unilateral ceasefire in the eight-month conflict.
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