Police arrest 700 Ethiopians suspected of planning armed attacks

The Addis Ababa Police Commission (AAPC) on Monday disclosed 700 individuals have been arrested on suspicion of planning armed attacks in Ethiopia’s capital.

In a press statement, the AAPC said around 700 suspected Tigray People’s Liberation Army (TPLF) operatives which were planning attacks in various parts of Addis Ababa city have been arrested.

The statement did not mention the identity of the suspects. The statement also did not mention the targets of the planned attacks.

Since November 4, the Ethiopian government had been undertaking military operations against the TPLF, the ruling party in Ethiopia’s northernmost Tigray region, and now in an official war against the federal government that followed TPLF’s reported attack against the Northern command of the Ethiopian Defense Force, a division that has been stationed in the region for over two decades.

The Ethiopian government has been blaming the TPLF, which was one of the four coalition fronts of Ethiopia’s former ruling party the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), for masterminding various treasonous acts across different parts of the country with an overarching goal of destabilizing the East African country.

Three of the former four EPRDF coalition members had last year joined other regional parties in establishing the Prosperity Party, as the TPLF refused to join.

The mounting differences between the federal government and TPLF exacerbated in September this year, when the Tigray regional government decided to go with its planned regional elections, which the Ethiopian parliament had previously postponed due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.