NAIROBI, Kenya - Ethiopia's military has gained "full control" of the capital of the defiant Tigray region, the army announced Saturday, and the prime minister said the taking of Mekele marked the "completion" of an offensive that started nearly four weeks ago. The regional government said the city of a half-million people was "heavily bombarded" in the final push to arrest its leaders.
"God bless Ethiopia and its people!" Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said in a statement. "We have entered Mekele without innocent civilians being targets."
Now, he said, police will pursue the leaders of the Tigray People's Liberation Front, who run the region and dominated Ethiopia's ruling coalition before Abiy came to power in 2018 and sidelined them among the sweeping reforms that won him the Nobel Peace Prize.
Abiy's government has accused the TPLF of inciting unrest and seeking to reclaim power, and each government now regards the other as illegal. The prime minister has rejected dialogue with TPLF leaders, including during a Friday meeting with three African Union special envoys.
As Abiy spoke of "returning normalcy" to the Tigray region, one of his ministers told The Associated Press in a phone interview "there is no way" the search for the TPLF leaders will take weeks.
The minister in charge of democratization, Zadig Abraha, also said the Ethiopian government doesn't yet know the number of people killed in the conflict.
"We have kept the civilian casualty very low," he asserted. Humanitarians and human rights groups have reported several hundred dead, including combatants.
Some Ethiopians at home and in the diaspora rejoiced at the news that Mekele was under the military's control. "Thanks to the Almighty God our creator. Amen. Let peace prevail in Ethiopia!!!" former Prime Minister Hailemariam Dessalegn tweeted.
The fighting has threatened to destabilize Ethiopia, which has been described as the linchpin of the strategic Horn of Africa, and its neighbors.
As international alarm has grown since the conflict began on Nov. 4, so has a massive humanitarian crisis. The Tigray region of 6 million people has been cut off from the world as the military pursued what Abiy called a "law enforcement operation" with airstrikes and tanks.
Food, fuel, cash and medical supplies have run desperately low. Nearly 1 million people have been displaced, including more than 40,000 who fled into Sudan. Camps home to 96,000 Eritrean refugees in northern Tigray have been in the line of fire.
With communications severed, it is difficult to verify claims by the warring sides. The Tigray leader, Debretsion Gebremichael, could not be reached Saturday. The heavily armed TPLF has long experience fighting in the region's rugged terrain, and some experts had warned of a drawn-out conflict.