Ethiopia: Ethiopian Airlines resumes commercial flights to Tigray.
The Ethiopian airline announced on Tuesday, the day after the visit of an Ethiopian government delegation to Mekele, the return of its commercial flights to Tigray. These will resume on Wednesday. The northern region of the country has been in the grip of a deadly conflict since November 2020.
Ethiopian Airlines will resume commercial flights to Tigray on Wednesday 28 December after an 18-month interruption due to the deadly conflict in this rebel region of northern Ethiopia, the company announced on Tuesday.
The announcement comes a day after an Ethiopian government delegation visited the Tigrayan capital Mekele for the first official visit in more than two years, marking a major step in the peace process launched in November.
“We are sincerely delighted that we have resumed flights to Mekele,” Ethiopia’s national airline group CEO Mesfin Tasew was quoted as saying in a statement.
“The resumption of these flights will reunite families, facilitate the restoration of commercial activities, stimulate tourism flows and bring many other opportunities that will serve the society,” he added.
Africa’s largest airline said it had scheduled daily flights to Tigray and would increase the frequency depending on demand.
The delegation in Mekele on Monday included the CEO of Ethiopian Airlines, Ethio Telecom and Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE), key players in the restoration of basic services, which Tigray has been deprived of for over a year.
Mekele was connected to the national electricity grid on 6 December and telephone communications with the region began to be restored. The CBE, the country’s main bank, announced on 19 December that it would resume operations in some towns.
The government and the Tigrayan rebels signed an agreement on 2 November to end the two-year war in northern Ethiopia.
The agreement provides for the disarmament of rebel forces, the re-establishment of federal authority in Tigray and the reopening of access and communications to the region, which has been cut off from the world since mid-2021.
The fighting began in November 2020, when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sent the army to arrest Tigrayan leaders who had been challenging his authority for months and whom he accused of attacking federal military bases.
The precise toll of the conflict, which was largely fought behind closed doors, is unknown. The International Crisis Group think tank and the NGO Amnesty International have described it as “one of the deadliest in the world”.
Miss OLY
