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Eritrea Admits Presence in Ethiopia's Tigray, Tells UN It Is Withdrawing

Reuters

   NEW YORK - Eritrea told the U.N. Security Council on Friday that it had
   agreed to start withdrawing its troops from Ethiopia's Tigray region,
   acknowledging publicly for the first time the country's involvement in
   the conflict.

   The admission in a letter to the 15-member council, posted online by
   Eritrea's Ministry of Information,came a day after U.N. aid chief Mark
   Lowcock said the world body had not seen any proof that Eritrean
   soldiers were withdrawing.

   "As the looming grave threat has been largely thwarted, Eritrea and
   Ethiopia have agreed -- at the highest levels -- to embark on the
   withdrawal of Eritrean forces and the simultaneous redeployment of
   Ethiopian contingents along the international boundary," Eritrea's U.N.
   Ambassador Sophia Tesfamariam wrote.

   Eritrean forces have been helping Ethiopian federal troops fight
   Tigray's former ruling party in a conflict that began in November.
   However, until now, Eritrea had repeatedly denied its forces were 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 U.N. nor any of the humanitarian agencies we work with
   have seen proof of Eritrean withdrawal," Lowcock told the Security
   Council on Thursday. "We have, however, heard some reports of Eritrean
   soldiers now wearing Ethiopian Defense Force uniforms."

   Thousands killed

   The conflict has killed thousands of people and forced hundreds of
   thousands more from their homes in the region of 5 million.

   Lowcock said there were "widespread and corroborated reports of
   Eritrean culpability in massacres and killings." Eritrean soldiers
   opened fire in an Ethiopian town on Monday, killing at least nine
   civilians and wounding more than a dozen others, a local government
   official told Reuters.

   The Security Council has been briefed privately five times since the
   conflict began. According to Lowcock's briefing notes on Thursday, he
   told the body that sexual violence was being used as a weapon of war,
   the humanitarian crisis had deteriorated in the past month and people
   were now dying of hunger in Tigray.

   "We heard false allegations of the 'the use of sexual violence and
   hunger as a weapon,' " Tesfamariam wrote on Friday. "The allegations of
   rape and other crimes lodged against Eritrean soldiers is not just
   outrageous, but also a vicious attack on the culture and history of our
   people."

   She said the priority should be the delivery of aid to civilians in
   Tigray.