ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) -Ethiopia’s army said on Friday its troops had killed more than 300 fighters from the Fano armed group in two days of clashes in the northern Amhara region.
The combat has raised the prospect of renewed warfare on a larger scale.
The Fano militia fought alongside the army and Eritrean forces in a two-year civil war that pitted Addis Ababa against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, which controls the northern region of Tigray.
Since then Eritrea and Ethiopia have fallen out after Asmara was excluded from peace talks to end that war in November 2022.
Fears of a new war emerged in recent weeks after Eritrea reportedly ordered a nationwide military mobilisation and Ethiopia deployed troops toward their border.
Fighting between Ethiopia’s army and Fano militiamen broke out in July 2023, fuelled in part by a sense of betrayal among
many Amharas about the terms of the 2022 peace deal.
The army said in a statement on Friday: “The extremist group calling itself Fano…carried out attacks in various (zones) of the Amhara region under the name of Operation Unity, and has been destroyed.”
It said 317 Fano fighters were killed and 125 injured.
Last year the TPLF split into two factions led by Debretsion Gebremichael and Getachew Reda, with each laying claim to control of the party.
The national army on Friday accused Brigadier General Migbey Haile, a senior military official allied with Debretsion’s
TPLF faction, of supporting the Fano militia’s Operation Unity.
Reuters was not immediately able to seek a response from Fano, a loose collection of militias in the Amhara region with
no centralised leadership.
Amanuel Assefa, a senior official in Debretsion’s faction of the TPLF, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(Reporting by Nairobi Newsroom; Writing by Hereward Holland; Editing by Alex Richardson, Ammu Kannampilly and Angus MacSwan)
