Another faction, the United Front of Ethiopian Federalist and Confederalist Forces has announced that it is setting up an alliance with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front -TPLF and its allies to bring down the country’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed by force or via a negotiation to form a transitional government.
The alliance which was announced by Mahamud Ugas Muhumed, of the Somali State Resistance, one of nine member groups factional leaders in Washington despite calls from African and Western leaders for a national ceasefire.
According to him, the alliance will be setting up a command to coordinate military and political efforts to bring down the government of Abiy in Ethiopia
The pact according to a TPLF leader and former Ethiopian ambassador to the United States Berhane Gebrekristos disclosed that the alliance will expand the existing agreement between the TPLF and the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), with the common aim of bringing an end to what they described as a terrible situation in Ethiopia.
Ethiopia’s Attorney General Gedion Temothewos has however called the alliance “a publicity stunt” and that some of the groups had a track record of “ethnic cleansing”, clearly referring to the OLA, accusing them of trying to commit “pogroms” in the western part of the Oromiya region.
The government has also claimed on Friday that a TPLF commander, Colonel Guesh Gebrehiwot, was captured on Thursday during fighting near Dessie in Amhara but the TPLF has been unreachable for comment on that.
A rejoinder by the government said it has a responsibility to secure the country and urged its international partners to stand with Ethiopia’s democracy adding that there is no equivalence between a democratically elected government and a group of terrorists and non-state actors that continue to cause violence and destruction,” its communication service said in a statement.
State-affiliated Fana TV also reported that thousands of people have taken to the streets on Friday for pro-government rallies in at least seven towns and cities in the Oromiya region, which surrounds Addis Ababa.
Amnesty International said there has been an alarming rise in social media posts advocating violence. Twitter said it had removed an unspecified number of pro-government accounts for violating policies against deceptive content aimed at misleading or disrupting other users.
With the rebels threatening to move on the capital Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian army on Friday called on former personnel to rejoin the military to fight them, state media said.
The U.N. Security Council on Friday called for an end to the fighting in Ethiopia and for talks on a lasting ceasefire as the 15-member body expressed deep concern in a rare statement about the expansion and intensification of military clashes.
The council also “called for refraining from inflammatory hate speech and incitement to violence and divisiveness.”
The United States has also advised its citizens to leave Ethiopia as soon as possible saying that the security environment is very fluid,” says a U.S. Embassy statement.
