ADDIS ABABA (Halbeeg News) -Ethiopia has withdrawn three soldiers of its troops from the U.N. peacekeeping force in South Sudan amid the operation against forces loyal to Tigrayan region escalated.
According to a diplomatic and security sources who told Reuters, soldiers of Tigrayan ethnicity were sent home, a move sources say was motivated by the violence in Tigray region.
Billene Seyoum, a spokeswoman for the prime minister’s office, said that “it would be the same situation” as Somalia, where the government disarmed between 200-300 soldiers of Tigrayan ethnicity serving in an African Union peacekeeping force and a bilateral force.
Last week, Reuters reported that Ethiopian peacekeepers in Somalia disarmed between 200 and 300 of their ethnic Tigrayan colleagues.
The soldiers’ weapons were removed due to concerns over their loyalty, the sources said, without detailing the process. They said they included bilateral and African Union troops.
The moves come as Ethiopia is preparing a military offensive against the capital of the country’s Tigray region, Mekelle.
Conflict erupted earlier this month between federal and Tigrayan forces in the ethnically divided nation, which for decades was under de facto rule by the minority Tigrayans.
The alarm inside the U.N. suggests that Ethiopia’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, may be expanding the country’s weekslong conflict beyond the country’s borders.
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