Ethiopian Airlines (ET, Addis Ababa International) says it has suspended flights from Addis Ababa International to Gondar and Lalibela, two towns in Ethiopia’s northern Amhara region, where armed clashes are increasing again between federal forces and the Fano militia, the news agencies Agence France-Presse, Belga, and Reuters reported.
Representatives of the carrier said on August 3 that rotations to Lalibela were interrupted two days previously. According to sources in the region, fighters from the nationalist Amhara Fano militia had seized the airport of the tourist town famous for its rock-cut churches classified as World Heritage by Unesco. Clashes also reportedly continue on the outskirts of Gondar.
Demeke Mekonnen, Ethiopia’s deputy prime minister and foreign minister, warned of “worrying security problems” in Amhara, and embassies in the country recommended to their nationals not to go there. On August 3, the government of the Amhara region appealed to the federal authorities to “take appropriate measures” following several days of skirmishes.
Fano fighters backed the Ethiopian military during the two-year civil war in the neighbouring Tigray region that ended last November, but recently relations have soured over a military operation to push the militia out of certain areas. Addis Ababa said in April that it wanted to dismantle all “special forces” - the paramilitary units that many of the country’s regional states have created over the last 15 years. Amhara nationalists assume this means it wants to weaken their region.
Ethiopian Airlines has cancelled flights to Amhara before, for example to Gondar and Bahar Dar in November 2020 after those airports were targeted by rocket fire during clashes that contributed to triggering the Tigray War.
More recently, since July 4, 2023, Germany continues to warn civil air operators to take the potential risk posed by anti-aircraft weaponry into account in their routing decisions within the Addis Ababa Flight Information Region (FIR).
