(9 Feb 1999) English/Nat
An Ethiopian plane has bombed an Eritrean village full of homeless people, killing at least five civilians as it escalated the border dispute in northeast Africa.
Two bombs landed three miles from Badme, where the latest round of fighting between Ethiopia and Eritrea began on Saturday.
The two Horn of Africa nations are fighting over an unmarked portion of their 600-mile (965-kilometer) border.
The fighting first flared in May, killing one-thousand people, before ending two weeks later in a tense standoff.
The U-S had brokered a moratorium on airstrikes, but the deal now appears abandoned.
War has returned to this arid stretch of borderland in the heart of the Horn of Africa.
Weekend fighting ended an eight-month stalemate in the war between Ethiopia and Eritrea over their unmarked border, a conflict that has simmered since Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia six years ago.
Late on Monday, Eritrea claimed its troops in the contested Badme-Shiraro area had survived withering artillery barrages and helicopter attacks and had pushed back a three-day Ethiopian offensive.
The Eritrean government said its forces had killed more than 15-hundred Ethiopian soldiers and wounded another three-thousand in fighting on Monday near the border at Tsorena, 100 kilometres (60 miles) south of Asmara.
It also claimed to have disabled at least three Ethiopian brigades in fighting at the Badme-Shiraro front, 150 kilometres (95 miles) southwest of Asmara.
Hand grenades and rifles littered the parched landscape after the battle and the air reeked of gunpowder and scorched metal.
Amid the devastation and death, morale was high among Eritrean troops.
They said they were determined to stop the Ethiopians from retaking the contested Yirga triangle, 95 miles (152 kilometres) southwest of the Eritrean capital, Asmara, and the largest of a half-dozen disputed areas.
SOUNDBITE: (English)
"They came to our trenches, this is our trenches, our defence area. So they entered, they came to out defence area. Our soldiers just fired and killed them"
SUPERCAPTION: Eritrean soldier
However, the Ethiopian government said on Monday that the Eritreans sustained heavy losses in Badme-Shiraro and further to the east.
A government spokeswoman said Ethiopian troops captured major Eritrean strongholds at Konin and Konito, areas so remote they do not appear on most maps of Eritrea or Ethiopia.
She added the Ethiopian air force had played "an instrumental role" in fighting off the Eritreans - a counter-offensive that would violate a moratorium on airstrikes brokered last June by President Bill Clinton.
An APTN cameraman witnessed a high-flying Ethiopian Antonov aircraft drop two bombs just before dawn on Tuesday on Lailaideda, where Eritreans recently deported from Ethiopia had gathered.
At least five people were killed and later buried in the hamlet, about five kilometres (three miles) from the border post of Badme where fighting first erupted last May.
Survivors say they are too frightened to stay in the area.
SOUNDBITE: (Tigre)
"I saw the aeroplanes at 5am this morning. They were circulating in the sky and they dropped the bombs on us. Some of the villagers were killed and now we are forced to flee".
SUPER CAPTION: Mekhrak Geralafie, civilian survivor of air attack
For the relatives of the victims, the eight-month break in fighting between the two countries has ended in brutal tragedy.
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