Eritrea, Ethiopia Airstrikes Escalate Border Conflict

A simmering border dispute between two usually friendly neighbors erupted into airstrikes Friday when Ethiopian fighters bombed an airport in Eritrea, and Eritrea sent its planes to a provincial capital of the country that only five years ago gave it independence.

The exchange dramatically escalated recent fighting that until Friday had been limited to ground skirmishes on a section of barren land that each country claims as its own. Reliable casualty figures were not available, but the airstrikes raised the prospect of full-scale war between two nations that President Clinton only two months ago held up as examples of an “African renaissance.”

In fact, so ardently did the administration want to avert more fighting that the State Department’s assistant secretary for Africa, Susan E. Rice, spent much of the last month shuttling between the Eritrean and Ethiopian capitals. A peace plan that she helped to broker was announced Thursday and immediately embraced by Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.

In the next breath, however, Meles declared that the Eritrean government had “exhausted our patience” and that Ethiopia’s military had been “directed to take all necessary measures” against its neighbor. Later, when Eritrea failed to embrace the proposal as well, the State Department announced that it was evacuating dependents and all nonessential personnel from its embassy in Asmara, the Eritrean capital.

The first of two Ethiopian air attacks against the Asmara airport came about 2 p.m. Friday. Witnesses said four MIG-23s bombed and strafed the military side of the complex, although the Reuters news agency reported that a commercial jet was also hit.

Antiaircraft fire brought down one of the MIGs, and the streets of Asmara filled with cheers at the news. News service reports that a second MIG had been downed could not be verified.

At the same hour, Eritrean warplanes launched the first of three strikes on Mekele. The city of 300,000 is capital of the northern Ethiopian province of Tigray, which includes the 160-square-mile section of disputed territory into which Eritrea first moved troops a month ago, triggering the current crisis.

The boundary was left vague when Eritrea became Africa’s newest nation in 1993. Formerly a province of Ethiopia, its 30-year war for independence was a key factor in the broader rebellion that toppled Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam. The dictator’s fall paved the way for Eritrea’s amicable divorce with Ethiopia’s new rulers. The two governments remained close until recent months, when frictions arose over Eritrea’s introduction of its own currency.

The peace plan offered by the U.S. and Rwanda appeared to survive the day’s bombings. Officials on both sides were careful to say that war had not been declared. And Eritrean officials who a day earlier had no comment on the proposal said repeatedly Friday that their only reservations involved “details and problems of implementation.”