Saturday, June 07, 2008
"Our fighters have killed 12 government soldiers in two separate attacks on May 30 and June 1 in areas along the Bada - Massawa road," said Yassin Mohammed, spokesman of the Red Sea Afars Democratic Organisation.
"Eight soldiers died, six were injured and 12 camps were destroyed in the first attack in Gobaado. On June 1, four were killed and more than 10 injured in a 5:00 am bomb attack on a military convoy in Ramot," he told AFP.
The attacks inside Eritrea could not be independently confirmed.
Yassin said the attacks were in response to Asmara's refusal to grant autonomy to the Afar, a nomadic people whose homeland straddles Eritrea, Ethiopia and Djibouti.
Around 1.4 million Afars live in Ethiopia while smaller numbers are found in Eritrea and Djibouti.
Formed in 1999, the Ethiopia-based RSADO is a member of the newly-formed group the Eritrean Democratic Alliance (EDA), a coalition of 13 Eritrean opposition parties.
Asmara routinely dismisses opposition movements based in Ethiopia.
Eritrea won independence from Ethiopia in 1991, but the two rivals fought a war between 1998 and 2000 over the precise delimitation of their border, which left at least 70,000 people dead. The row remains unresolved.
Source: AFP, June 07, 2008