PRETORIA, Nov 3 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The warring sides in Ethiopia’s devastating conflict have agreed on a truce, the African Union’s mediator announced following marathon talks in South Africa.
The deal was unveiled almost two years to the day since the start of a war that has claimed many thousands of lives and unleashed a desperate humanitarian crisis.
“Today is the beginning of a new dawn for Ethiopia, for the Horn of Africa and indeed for Africa as a whole,” the AU’s broker, former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, declared.
“The two parties in the Ethiopian conflict have formally agreed to the cessation of hostilities as well as the systematic, orderly, smooth and coordinated disarmament,” Obasanjo said at a briefing in Pretoria.
They also agreed on “restoration of law and order, restoration of services, unhindered access to humanitarian supplies, protection of civilians … among other areas of agreement.”
Diplomatic efforts to bring the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and the rebels to the negotiating table gathered pace after combat resumed in late August, torpedoing a five-month truce that had allowed limited amounts of aid into war-stricken Tigray.
They were the first formal dialogue between the Ethiopian government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) since the conflict began.
Despite the peace process, intense fighting had continued unabated in Tigray, where government troops backed by the Eritrean army and regional forces were waging artillery bombardments and air strikes, capturing a string of towns from the rebels.
As well as a ceasefire and humanitarian access to Tigray, Western governments had also called for a withdrawal of Eritrean forces, whose return to the battleground has raised fears of renewed atrocities against civilians.
The war has forced well over two million people from their homes, and according to US estimates, killed as many as half a million. — NNN-AGENCIES
