spring they have been quietly regroupg and reorganizing, and they have has benefited from a huge surge in recruitnent, young tigran from across the region joining is the fight and many said they were motivated to get involved because of the atrocity that have been taking place in parallel with the fighting. in the past couple of months there s been numerous reports of massacres, ethnic cleansing, looting and horrific sexual violence in teeingry. much of that has been blamed against the ethiopian forces, against their partners, the eritreans, and so the young people that we spoke to that we saw out in the countryside, in one instance, thousand of people marching down a country road, young people who were coming to sign up for this tigran force, they said they were motivated to join the fight because they were
absolutely eye-opening. describe what you saw. what does the day-to-day life of people in tigre look like right now. well, it s been changing dramatically over the last number of weeks. when we arrived in tigre just after ethiopia s elections on june 21st, the ethiopian government was still in control of the regional capital and much of the surrounding areas. over the days that followed, things changed very quickly. the tigran forces had been had won a series of saddlefield victories against the ethiopians in the countryside. they pressed in on the capital city, and as you can see in the pictures there the ethiopians were forced to abandon the city and the tigran forces opened to a huge reception from the local people so since then we ve seen the tigrans being buoyed by the
victory saying they have pressed to the south where there s been fighting to the south and in the north where eritrean forces are, and they say they are going to keep going until they expel all of those outside forces, ethiopian, eritrean and ethnic mill shot from the region until they succeed. how have they been able to succeed so far? we think of ethiopia as being one of africa s strongest armies? how based on your reporting did the tigran rebels, excuse mow, make these advances? well, there s a couple of factors. certainly numerically much smaller than the national army but when this war started in november many of the officers in the ethiopian army were from teeingry. many of those defected to the rebel side. they suffered serious losses in the beginning, but over the