ERITREA is mobilising its armed forces and appears to be sending them to Ethiopia to aid its neighbour’s war in the Tigray region, activists warned today.

Eritrean rights activist Meron Estefanos told reporters today that her cousin had been called up “and is somewhere in Ethiopia fighting and we don’t know if he is alive or not.”

“It’s just a sad war, like our region has not seen enough blood for generations,” said Ms Estefanos, who is director of the Eritrean Initiative on Refugee Rights.

Eyewitnesses in Eritrea said that people including students and public servants are being rounded up across the nation.

Eritrea mandates military service for all its citizens between the ages of 18 and 40.

Rights groups say the practice, which lasts indefinitely in most cases, is driving thousands of youths into exile.

Eritreans make up a large number of the migrants attempting to cross to Europe, often dangerously by sea.

The country’s forces fought on the side of Ethiopian federal troops in the war in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, which shares a border with Eritrea, when that conflict broke out in November 2020, and were implicated in some of the worst atrocities committed in the war, charges they deny.

Tigray authorities now assert that Eritreans are again entering the war that reignited in August after a lull in fighting earlier this year.

The conflict is estimated to have killed tens of thousands of people and left millions without basic services for well over a year.