Youth in Ethiopia’s Amhara mobilise against Tigray forces

According to media reports, some young men were seen lining up on Monday in response to a weekend call to arms by their president, as Amhara’s government denied that forces from neighbouring Tigray had advanced further into the region.

On Sunday Agegnehu Teshager, president of the Amhara regional government, had called on “all young people” to take up arms against TPLF fighters, who say they are advancing deeper south into Amhara territory.

A resident of the town of Debark, 40 km south of Zarima in northern Amhara, told Reuters by phone that he had seen young people and government employees lining up on Monday in response to the president’s call.

“For now, it is people who have weapons that are registering,” he said, adding that he had heard volunteers “will be given a short training”.

Tigrayan forces pushed into Afar last week, the region to the east of Tigray, where they said they planned to target Amhara troops fighting alongside the federal military.

 The eight-month-old war between Ethiopia’s central government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the party that controls Tigray, has spread to neighbouring parts of northern Ethiopia, risking a further destabilisation of Africa’s second most populous nation.

Thousands of people have died in the war, around 2 million have been forced from their homes and more than 5 million depend on emergency food aid.