According to hospital staff and Tigray rebels in Ethiopia, an airstrike struck the region’s capital about midnight on Tuesday. This is the latest such attack to be recorded in recent days.
Following a resumption of ground combat between government forces and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) last week, bombings took place.
A five-month-old truce has been broken by the recent fighting, which has clouded attempts to put an end to the nearly two-year conflict in the north of the continent’s second-most populous nation.
“Night time drone attack in Mekele. No conceivable military targets!” TPLF spokesman Getachew Reda said on Twitter.
“Mekele Hospital among the targets and at least three bombs dropped.”
Kibrom Gebreselassie, chief clinical director at Mekele’s Ayder Referral Hospital, also said on Twitter there had been a drone attack “close to midnight” near Mekele general hospital.
“Casualties are arriving to Ayder Hospital,” he said, without giving details.
Fighting that broke out last Wednesday in districts around the southeast edge of Tigray was attributed to both the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and the TPLF.
The first airstrike on Mekele in many months killed at least four people, including children, on Friday. UNICEF has denounced the bombing. Three children were among the seven fatalities, according to local channel Tigrai TV.
Rebels in Tigray had claimed that the government had bombed a neighborhood and a daycare. Addis Abeba, however, claimed that only military facilities were hit and charged the TPLF with “dropping false corpse bags in civilian areas” in an effort to stir up discontent.
Due to significant access restrictions, it is impossible to independently confirm the reality on the ground or the statements made by the fighting parties.
“We are fighting a defensive war,” Getachew said earlier Tuesday at a press conference broadcast online, adding: “We will remain open for any negotiations.”
Residents, as well as diplomatic and humanitarian sources, have said that in recent days TPLF fighters have pushed about 50 kilometres (30 miles) south from Tigray into Amhara and to the southeast into Afar, sending many people fleeing.
“We have defended our positions and we are now launching a counter-offensive,” Getachew said.
“Abiy keeps making miscalculation after miscalculation, he keeps sending reinforcements and we’ll continue to neutralise (them) and that will take us probably deeper and deeper into Amhara region.”