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Ethiopia warns Sudan over military build-up amid border tensions

Post Date: Wednesday, January 13, 2021

Ethiopia has accused Sudanese forces of pushing further into a contested border region that has been the site of deadly clashes in recent weeks, warning that its “peaceful” approach to the dispute “has its limit”.

Sharing a 1,600km (994mile) frontier, the two neighbouring countries have long feuded over the al-Fashqa region, where Ethiopian farmers cultivate fertile land claimed by Sudan.

The border tensions come at a time when Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt are also trying to resolve a three-way dispute over the controversial dam Ethiopia is building on the Blue Nile, known as the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).

“The Sudanese side seems to be pushing in so as to inflame the situation on the ground,” Ethiopian foreign ministry spokesman Dina Mufti told reporters on Tuesday. “Is Ethiopia going to start a war? Well, we are saying let’s work on diplomacy.”

“How long will Ethiopia continue to resolve the issue using diplomacy? Well, there is nothing that has no limit. Everything has a limit,” he told a media briefing in the capital, Addis Ababa.

In early December, Sudan accused Ethiopian “forces and militias” of ambushing Sudanese troops along the border, leaving four dead and more than 20 wounded.

Ethiopia, for its part, said last week that Sudan’s military had “organised attacks by using heavy machine guns” and that “many civilians have been murdered and wounded”.

Sudan’s information minister and government spokesman Feisal Mohamed Saleh said the country did not want war with Ethiopia but its forces would respond to any aggression.

“We fear that these comments contain a hostile position towards Sudan. We ask of Ethiopia to stop attacking Sudanese territory and Sudanese farmers,” he told Reuters news agency.Read More @https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/1/12/ethiopia-warns-sudan-over-border-dispute