United Nations - Ethiopian troops have been found inside a buffer zone intended to keep apart the once-warring armies of Horn of Africa neighbours Ethiopia and Eritrea, the United Nations said on Thursday. A peace agreement ending their two-year border war required Ethiopia to pull back its troops to positions it held before the fighting began, and Eritrea to withdraw to 25 km from Ethiopian positions, creating the buffer zone. A week later, on a routine patrol, they found Ethiopian soldiers in three different locations about six km inside the zone, southeast of the town of Senafe. Ethiopia later acknowledged its troops had returned to the buffer zone but refused to withdraw them when formally asked to do so, according to a statement issued by the UN Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea, known as UNMEE. Eritrea announced earlier this month that it had missed the deadline for pulling its troops out of the zone to protest UN changes in the zone's boundaries.

Source: Ethiopian News September 11, 2017 10:18 UTC