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Landmines Threaten Returnees In Badme Front

Ghion Hagos, PANA Correspondent
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (PANA)

  • Landmines and cross-border shelling pose a major threat to the population returning to the Mereb river area of the Badme front, despite the lull in the Ethiopia-Eritrea border fighting for the past two weeks.

Ethiopian military authorities said the latest fierce fighting occurred there from 25-26 June, and Ethiopian forces successfully repulsed a two-pronged Eritrean offensive to recapture Badme.

A senior commander told visiting reporters from Addis Ababa 28 June that this was the fourth time the Eritreans were trying to regain control over the area since being ejected in ''Operation Sunset.''

Although the Ethiopian army managed to liberate 8,000 sq.km in four days of fighting, landmines and cross-border shelling remain menace to thousands of displaced people wishing to return home.

Signs of apprehension were visible on the faces of the displaced people when the media group toured the liberated areas in Dadme district and parts of the adjoining Shiraro district.

These are located between the garrison town of Endaselassie, capital of the western administrative zone of the Tigray Regional State, and badme town, a distance of 153 kms.

The international frontier on the Mereb river is 17 kms north of Badme.

The conflict has displaced some 100,000 people on the Badme front alone, a sparsely populated semi-arid grazing and farmland.

Some 350,000 others were displaced from the populated Zalambessa front, some 400 kms east of Badme. Over 30,000 others have been displaced at the third front at Bure, some 70 kms from the Red Sea Port of Assab.

But the threat of landmines and cross-border shelling are more pronounced on the Badme front where fierce fighting had been concentrated during the last four months.

It is difficult to estimate the number of mines in the area, which was heavily infested with anti-personnel mines before it was liberated.

By the end of May, some 35,000 anti-personnel mines had been cleared, according to Kiros Bitew, chairman of the administrative council of Western Tigray zone in Endaselassie.

He pointed out that most of the displaced people on the Badme front, who account for one-eighth of the 800,000 total population of western zone of the region, are desperate to return to their homes.

Kiros recalled that when the fighting erupted, less than a month of the start of the rainy season, ''families out on the field were separated from those at home.''

''There were also cases of separations of entire families that fled in different ways and are still unaccounted for,'' he said.

According to media reports, land mines had killed about 20 people, including children herding cattle, and over 100 others suffered serious and light injuries by the end of May.

Among the victims were displaced people who had rushed back to their homes and farms within a few weeks after ''Operation Sunset.''

Mamuye Legesse, (49), a resident of Badme town, said he had braved the shellings since returning home.

He has now reopened his old and partially demolished shop where he sells an assortment of items.

''The enemy should be pushed away from the border area so that this town and other localities will be outside the reach of the Eritrean artillery,'' Mamuye said.

A senior military officer said that although Ethiopian forces have the ability to end the war, they ''strictly follow the government policy of limiting their actions within the national boundary, as we do not covet Eritrean territory.''

The wish of thousands of people from the area to return to normal life could become a reality once Eritrea puts into practice its acceptance of fresh modalities for the implementation of the OAU Framework Agreement, which calls on it to withdraw its troops outside the areas they occupied after 6 May, 1998.

PANA GH/AF/PBM/GA 16July99

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