Ethiopia says military assault targeted 'subversive groups' that had carried out attacks on its territory

This article is more than 8 years old

This article is more than 8 years old

Fears of renewed conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea have intensified after Addis Ababa announced it had sent troops into its sworn enemy's territory for the first time in more than a decade.

Ethiopia's forces carried out a dawn raid on Thursday in neighbouring Eritrea in what it described as a successful attack against military targets.

Shimeles Kemal, a government spokesman, said Ethiopia launched the military assault because Eritrea was training "subversive groups" that had carried out attacks on its territory.

Ethiopia Eritrea map

Ground forces targeted three bases about 10 miles inside south-eastern Eritrea. Kemal said Eritrea had used the bases to train an Ethiopian rebel group that Addis Ababa claims killed five foreign tourists and kidnapped two others in Ethiopia's remote Afar region in January. Eritrea denies any involvement.

Shimeles said: "[These] measures do not constitute a direct military confrontation between the two countries. The Ethiopian defence force has entered into Eritrea and launched a successful attack against military posts that have been used to organise, finance and train the subversive groups.

"The Eritrean defence force is not in a position to launch an attack against Ethiopia and were they to try to do so, the results would be disastrous."

The incursions were the first that Ethiopia has admitted to since the countries fought a border war from 1998 to 2000 that left at least 70,000 people dead. Eritrea alleges there have been other such attacks.

Eritrea claimed on Friday that the attack was meant divert attention from a border dispute between the two countries. Osman Saleh, the foreign affairs minister, said Ethiopia would not have carried out the attack without the protection of the United States and UN security council.

Eritrea said the attack was provocative but would not "entrap" it. "The objective of the attack … is to divert attention from the central issue of the regime's flagrant violation of international law and illegal occupation of sovereign Eritrean territories," the foreign ministry said.

It said Eritrea "will not be entrapped by such deceitful ploys that are aimed at derailing and eclipsing the underlying fundamental issues".

A bitter dispute over the position of Eritrea and Ethiopia's shared border was not resolved at the end of the war. The Hague-based Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission ruled in 2002 that the border village of Badme belonged to Eritrea. But the village remains in Ethiopia and Eritrea blames the international community, and the UN in particular, for not forcing Ethiopia to accept the border.

Analysts say Eritrea, unable to match Ethiopia militarily, has launched a proxy war in Somalia to weaken its neighbour. President Isaias Afewerki's government has been hit with sanctions for links with Somalia's al-Shabaab rebels.

Tension grew last year when a UN report revealed that Eritrea was behind a plot to attack an African Union summit in Ethiopia in January.

The US called on both countries to "exercise restraint and to avoid any further military action."

A western diplomat in Addis Ababa told Reuters that the neighbours were unlikely to harbour intentions for an all-out war, but both would be happy to see the other's government fall.

"Ethiopia will take whatever means necessary to topple the regime in Asmara, but a full-scale war is unthinkable. I believe these type of incidents will happen again."

Eritrea was annexed by Ethiopia in 1952 but gained independence in 1993 after a 30-year guerrilla war.