ETHIOPIA’s prime minister said today that the “final and crucial” military operation against the government of the northern Tigray region will launch in the coming days. 

Abiy Ahmed, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year, posted on social media that a three-day deadline given to the region’s leaders and special forces had expired. 

He has rejected international pleas for dialogue and de-escalation in the conflict that began two weeks ago in the Horn of Africa, which has spread into neighbouring Eritrea and sent more than 25,000 Ethiopian refugees fleeing to Sudan.

On Monday, Abiy said that his government is ready to “receive and reintegrate” the refugees and that federal forces would protect them. 

But many refugees have said those same forces were the ones that left them with no option but to leave. 

Ethiopia’s federal government today also confirmed carrying out new air strikes outside the Tigray capital of Mekele, calling them “precision-led and surgical” while denying the Tigray government’s assertion that civilians had been killed.

Tigray TV showed what appeared to be a bombed-out residential area, with damaged roofs and craters in the ground.

“I heard a sound of some explosions as I entered the house,” the station quoted a resident as saying. 

“When I got out later, I saw all this destruction. Two people have been injured. One of them is the landlord; the other is a tenant just like us.”

Communication and transport links with the Tigray region remain almost completely cut off, making it difficult to verify the claims of either side.

The United Nations has warned that the conflict is developing into a “full-scale humanitarian crisis.”