Sudanese armed forces on Sunday accused the Ethiopian army of executing seven Sudanese soldiers and a civilian who were held as captives, reported TRT World.
Ina statement, the Sudanese army also accused Ethiopia of displaying the bodies of the executed people to the public and vowed that there would be “an appropriate response.”
“This treacherous act will not pass without a response,” the army said in the statement.
Tensions between Sudan and Ethiopia have been brewing in recent years because of a spill over of the conflict in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region and Ethiopia’s construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on the Blue Nile.
The Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed had sent his federal government forces to Tigray in November 2020 to control the area and hunt down rebels, in response to what he said were attacks on army camps in the region.
The conflict has since divided the multiethnic country and led to a humanitarian catastrophe. According to the United Nations (UN), about 5 million people in Tigray depend on emergency aid, while 400,000 people suffer from starvation. Thousands of Ethiopians died, as the fighting continues amid reports of massacres, crimes against humanity and mass rapes.
Sudan has received tens of thousands of Ethiopian refugees who fled the war, mostly from Tigray.
Also, the two countries have been locked in a decades-old dispute over the 260-square-kilometer border area of al-Fashqa, a patch of fertile agricultural borderland from which Khartoum expelled thousands of Ethiopian farmers in mid-December 2020. The escalation has since led to renewed clashes between the two countries.
In November 2021, clashes resumed between Sudan and Ethiopia’s forces in the Barakat Noreen area in al-Fashqa. At least six Sudanese soldiers were killed back then, according to the Sudanese army.
According to official data from Khartoum, at least 84 Sudanese soldiers were killed in border clashes with Ethiopian forces and militias from November 2020 until August 2021.
