Troops Still Fighting Rebels for Key Port, Ethiopia Says : Civil war: Famine relief efforts are halted as battle enters fourth day, government reports.

Government troops and secessionist rebels battled for a fourth day Sunday for Ethiopia’s vital Red Sea port of Massawa, state radio said.

The Sunday morning broadcast by the government-controlled station conflicted with a report Saturday night by the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front that it had captured the city.

The government broadcast did not directly deny the claim by the rebels’ clandestine radio station, but it said fighting is continuing around the port, one of only two on Ethiopia’s Red Sea coast. The other port is Assab, near the border with Djibouti.

Massawa is a key staging point for emergency food donated through the United Nations for an estimated 4 million people facing famine in northern Ethiopia this year.

Ashagre Yigletu, deputy prime minister for social affairs, reported that the renewed fighting around Massawa had effectively halted the relief effort.

The United Nations hoped to ship 700,000 tons of food in the next few months to northern drought victims, most of them in Eritrea and neighboring Tigre province. Most of that aid would have been delivered by ship to Massawa, although detailed plans for its distribution have not been worked out.

The rebels broke an almost yearlong lull in fighting in Eritrea by launching a massive offensive Thursday that clearly had the capture of Massawa as a primary objective.

In the first three days of fighting, the rebels claimed to have destroyed eight government brigades totaling about 12,000 troops, most of them entrenched along the 40-mile road linking Massawa with the provincial capital of Asmara.

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

Foreign Minister Tesfaye Dinka told diplomats in Addis Ababa that the Eritrean offensive appeared aimed at taking pressure off the Tigrean rebels.

While they do not share common goals, the two insurgent groups have long maintained a loose alliance and have been known to coordinate their attacks against government forces.

The Tigrean rebels launched their own offensive in late August, sweeping south and west.

A government counteroffensive begun in January appeared to have halted and in some areas pushed back the Tigreans’ southern drive.