Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Djibouti (Agenzia Fides) – 9 soldiers of Djibouti are dead and 60 wounded, after fighting broke out on the border between Eritrea and Djibouti 3 days ago. No information has been released regarding victims on the part of Eritrea. According to the local press, the authorities in Djibouti have captured 100 Eritrean soldiers.
The fighting broke out on June 10 in the Monte Gabla area, known as “Ras Doumeira,” near the Strait of Bab el Mandeb, after nearly two months of tensions between the two armies of the countries situated on this border. Djibouti accused Eritrean soldiers of having invaded their territory in order to build defense lines, an accusation which is denied by Eritrea.
Djibouti, whose army has 11,000 men, has begun calling on its disbanded soldiers and police agents on pension. Asmara has an army of 200,000 men, many of whom are located on the border with Ethiopia, where tensions have heightened following the bloody war of 1998-2000.
On May 6, in a letter to the President of the UN Security Council, Djibouti’s Foreign Minister, Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, accused Eritrea of “an obvious attempt against the national territorial integrity of my country.” In the letter, he asked the Security Council to “take the necessary measures as soon as possible, in preventing yet another conflict in a region already so devastated by chaos, bloodshed, and destruction.” The government in Djibouti denounced the “preparation of forts and the deployment of well-armed troops from Eritrea, in our part of the Ras Doumeira, a mountain chain that overlooks the trafficked waterway of the Red Sea.”
Djibouti, which is home to the only US military base in Africa, inhabited by 2,000 men, is a key country in the French military presence in Africa. In addition to avian forces and naval forces, Paris controls one thirteenth of the semi-brigade of the Foreign Legion. Djibouti is also the only exit to the sea for Ethiopia. (LM) (Agenzia Fides 12/6/2008)
