Government troops regain control of several towns in the country's Amhara region where rebels made swift gains over the past weeks
The Ethiopian government has claimed that it has regained control of several towns in the Amhara province where it is battling the Fano insurgency group.
The regional capital Bahir Dar, Gondar, Lalibela, Shoa-Robit, Debre Birhan have fallen back to government troops according to a statement from the military command post established to rule over the region after the rebels temporarily took over the regional government.
These major towns were swept by a rapid offensive by the Fano rebels last week. The Ethiopian airlines also announced flights will resume starting Thursday.
The Fanos are volunteers from the local Amhara community who fight with their own weaponry. It's predominantly a peasant army made up of discontented farmers. They say members of their community have been targets of a "genocidal attack" going on in the neighboring Oromiya region where Abiy Ahmed came from.
The farmers and the prime minister were allies when they both fought the TPLF invasion in 2021. After getting the upper hand over TPLF, Abiy quickly moved to disarm the farmers in what seems to be a "bitter betrayal", analysts say.
Policial groups who claim to represent the Fanos say the country's political structure and constitution disfranchises them. Ethiopia's constitution was drafted in 1995 after TPLF rebels from Tigray province removed the Mengistu Hailemariam regime.
Reports show the Fano fighters still control the majority of rural Amhara where the army is not interested in being dragged into a war of attrition.
Ethiopia already lost over a million men in the war against TPLF and the country's economy totally wiped out.
Ethiopia is made up of nine ethnic regions and each region has a significant Amhara population completely excluded from politics and economy. Abiy promised to reform the system in 2018 but it was only a lip-service to form an anti-TPLF alliance.