Ethiopia Launches Military Attack in Eritrea

Addis Ababa---Ethiopian government forces have carried out across-border raid inside Eritrea on a military base claimed to be used in training of insurgent groups to carry out attacks inside Ethiopia, government spokesman has said.

Ethiopian government spokesman Shimeles Kemal, said the army unit involved in the Thursday’s operation had returned to the camp after successfully completing their mission.

"Our national defence force has today taken measures against military posts inside Eritrea in which subversive and anti-peace elements were trained," Kemal told reporters.

He accused Eritrea government for supporting Subversive groups that were responsible for attacks inside Ethiopia, warning of further possible operation.

"As long as Eritrea remains a launching pad for attacks against Ethiopia, similar measures will continue to be taken," he said.

Eritrea has yet commented about the attack in which a number of people are said to be killed and several others captured when the Ethiopian troops hit three places about 16km inside south-eastern Eritrea.

This is the first offensive by Ethiopian troops inside Eritrea since end of the 1998-2000 war in which some 80,000 people were killed. Despite signing a peace treaty, tension between the two states, once single remains high.

Both the US and France have urged the two states to exercise restraint and avoid further military action and find a negotiated solution to their differences.

US State Department through its spokeswoman Victoria Nuland confirmed the Thursday operation by Ethiopian troops calling for restrain.

In a statement by French foreign Ministry, spokesman Bernard Valero said "France urges both states to avoid military escalation and, more broadly, to avoid raising tension. France believes the only way of resolving the dispute between the two countries is through dialogue and negotiation."  

In recent weeks Addis Ababa has accused Eritrea of backing Ethiopian rebels responsible for the January raid in northern Afar region where Gunmen killed two Germans, two Hungarians and an Austrian in an attack on a group of tourists seizing two Germans and two Ethiopians.

Eritrea which was once a province of Ethiopia became independent in 1993 after three decades of guerrilla fighting. Eritrea has been implicated in UN reports over its support for the al-Daeda linked Somali al-Shabab group, charges it denies.

 Khartoum, Sudan

Actor George Clooney Warns of a Darfur Situation in Nuba Mountains

US Activist film star George Clooney has accused the Sudanese government of committing war crimes on civilians in the Southern and Blue Nile regions, warning that the situation was fast turning into a new Darfur.

The actor alongside other activist and co-founder of the Satellite Sentinel Project, John Prendergast testified before the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on Wednesday after returning from tour in Sudan and South Sudan.

The activist actor launched his “Sudan video trip diary” documenting the indiscriminate bombing of civilians in the Nuba Mountains region of South Kordofan state of Sudan, where he noted that violence in the region was not only between government forces and the rebels.

 “In general what we saw were Nuban people who were incredibly vulnerable…We were there as they were firing rockets into villages. These are not military positions. There was no military there. This is a programme designed to get these populations to leave,” Clooney said.

The two activists described the violence in Sudan as well as the humanitarian crisis at hand to be turning to that similar to genocide in Darfur that has been blamed on the government.

“All the same factors that existed in Darfur are unfolding today in the Nuba Mountains and the Blue Nile,” Prendergast said. “It’s just a different region with the same issues with the central government, and the same targeting on the base of people’s identity that we saw in Darfur.”

According to the UN an estimated 300,000 people have died in Darfur since 2003 when rebel groups took up arms in protest against the Khartoum government they accused of being in favour of the nomadic Arabs against the farming African communities in the region.

The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) troops and militias loyal to Khartoum have been battling the SPLA-N after the government embarked on what is claimed as disarmament operation against the rebel group that had been fighting alongside now independent South Sudan rulers during the civil war.

The activist star is scheduled to meet President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton during his Washington tour this week, where he said he would urge leaders to pressure China with the goal of ending the violence.

“For once in our lives we can go to China and ask them to do something not for humanitarian purposes but actually for their own economic good, and for ours, quite honestly.” Said Clooney.

China is Sudan’s major trading partner; being the largest buyer of the Sudanese oil and key military supplier to Khartoum.

The Sudanese government has banned all foreign aid operations in the restive South Kordofan and Blue Nile state states where about currently 30,000 people remain displaced in the clashes.