Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who has gone from Nobel Peace Prize laureate to a leader caught up in a domestic conflict in the space of two years, pledged victory but also asked the public to take up arms.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner urged citizens to take up arms to repel rebels advancing toward the capital, saying, "dying for Ethiopia is a duty." The conflict has raged for a year and plunged the country into despair.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who has gone from Nobel Peace Prize laureate to a leader caught up in a domestic conflict in the space of two years, pledged victory but also asked the public to take up arms.
BBC News
By Alex de Waal
image captionConflict has left countless homes in Tigray as debris
Every day, more and more reports of starvation trickle out of the Tigray region of Ethiopia that has been hit by conflict.
On Wednesday, Mark Lowcock, chief of humanitarian affairs at the United Nations, warned of a deteriorating humanitarian crisis in which aid still wasn t reaching many affected people.
Earlier in the week, his predecessor Jan Egeland, now head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, was more blunt: In all my years as an aid worker, I have rarely seen a humanitarian response so impeded and unable to deliver in response for so long, to so many with such pressing needs.