Ethiopian Rebels Report Capture of Strategic Port on Red Sea

Rebels in Ethiopia’s northern province of Eritrea said Saturday that they have captured the strategic Red Sea port of Massawa after launching a major offensive two days ago.

“The entire town is under the control of the EPLF,” Yemane Gabre Meskel, a spokesman for the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front, said by telephone from London. “We received the news about an hour ago but have no more details for the time being.”

The Ethiopian government confirmed the new fighting, but not the rebel claim to have captured Massawa, the country’s main port. Ethiopia’s other Red Sea port is Assab, near the border with Djibouti.

Food, fuel and other supplies for Eritrea’s 3 million people enter the country through Massawa, which is linked by a 70-mile highway to Asmara, capital of Eritrea, and other towns in the central highlands. Control of Massawa would enable the rebels to cut off the last open supply line to Asmara. With 400,000 people, it is the second-largest city in Ethiopia after Addis Ababa, the capital.

The quick offensive by the rebels took place along a 120-mile front stretching from Keren in the central highlands of Eritrea to the coast. It followed a nine-month lull in fighting between Ethiopia’s Marxist government and the secessionist EPLF.

The new offensive also has jeopardized plans by the United Nations to provide food in the next few months for an estimated 4 million drought victims in northern Ethiopia, mostly in the provinces of Eritrea and Tigre. Much of the relief supplies move through the port of Massawa.

In a clandestine radio broadcast, the rebels said they have taken control of the road from Asmara to Massawa, 40 miles northeast of the provincial capital, in what they described as “a crushing offensive.”

“The operation was very broad and swift and the victory very great,” said the Voice of the Broad Masses of Eritrea.

The Eritrean rebels have been fighting for independence for their province, once an Italian colony, since 1961 in what has become Africa’s oldest war.

The attack by the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front came as the government appeared to be containing another offensive farther south by the Tigre People’s Liberation Front, a separate insurgent group.

The Tigrean rebels, based in the province just south of Eritrea, launched their own offensive in August, pushing government troops out of their last remaining strongholds in Tigre and sweeping south and east into the provinces of Wollo and Gondar.

The government declared a mass mobilization in September. In a counteroffensive in January, it recaptured some of the towns and garrisons taken earlier by the Tigrean insurgents.