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Mounting apprehensions exist about the possibility of military engagement involving Horn of Africa countries, Ethiopia and the Eritrean government, as confrontational rhetoric has intensified in recent weeks.

What Did Ethiopian Officials Declared?

Landlocked Ethiopia's calls for access to the Red Sea through Eritrea has sparked a fierce war of words.

Ethiopian Prime Minister initially stated publicly in the previous year that his country's access to the sea was an crucial concern, statements that Eritrea rejected.

Ties between the neighboring nations have regularly been difficult. Following a decades-long struggle for freedom, the Eritrean state, which has a extensive Red Sea coastline, legally broke away from Ethiopian rule in 1993, leaving it landlocked.

Five years later, a territorial conflict broke out in which numerous people were killed.

Recent Statements from Ethiopia's Government

Prime Minister Abiy and army chief Field Marshal Birhanu Jula have directly stated ownership of Eritrea's maritime facility of Assab – approximately 60 kilometers from the border - and implied the wish to seize it militarily.

On 1 September, the Prime Minister said Ethiopia's "blunder" of losing access to the Red Sea as a due to Eritrean independence would be "corrected in the future".

Ethiopia's ambassador to neighboring Kenya, ex-military officer Bacha, said that the port was "Ethiopian property" and would be given back "through military action".

Eritrean Answer to the Threats

In the face of ongoing challenges from Ethiopian officials, Eritrea's reaction has been confined to brief comments on online platforms from Communications Head the minister.

Officials have denied Ethiopia's demand for maritime entry calling it "dangerous" and a "harmful plan" of "expansionism" – a policy of reclaiming lost territory.

Government spokespeople alerted on 16 September that attempts to validate "flagrant aggression" would have serious consequences for the Ethiopian government and its neighbors and is a "limit that should not be crossed|violated|breached".

Security Movements on the Border

So far, there are little evidence of significant troop deployments in the frontier regions between the neighboring states.

However, in Ethiopia, state television has displayed completion events of numerous trainees at various military training camps.

The director of human resources department of the military, General Hachalu, commented lately in an interview that the defense forces was in a "reliable position" as "many thousands of recruits" were enlisting, which he said was "a warning to our opponents".

Previous Origins of the Dispute

For more than half a century from 1890, Eritrea was governed by Italian colonisers.

Following Italy's defeat, it was then administered by the British military before turning into a integrated region of Ethiopia.

However in 1962 Emperor Haile Selassie I terminated this agreement and the region became completely integrated into Ethiopia.

A three-decade long civil war ensued, concluding with military reversal in 1991. Sovereignty was then approved by Eritreans in a vote in 1993.

Temporarily in the 1990s, there were positive ties between the authorities in Addis Ababa and Eritrea's capital, but they clashed over the precise positioning of their mutual frontier, causing hostilities in 1998.

Even though this ended in a peace deal in 2000, it was incompletely executed, and the two nations continued at odds.

This situation improved in 2018, when the Prime Minister made overtures to Eritrea's leader the president. The two endorsed a statement that the hostilities was over – a move that earned Abiy the prestigious award.

The two governments were then cooperators in the country's 2020-2022 civil war in the northern region.

But ties have later worsened once more.