A second day of airstrikes on Ethiopia’s Tigray region killed 10 people on Wednesday, hospital officials said, in attacks that came after authorities there expressed a willingness for a ceasefire.

Two drone strikes hit a neighborhood in Tigray’s capital, Mekele, around 7:30 a.m. (04:30 GMT), killing 10 and injuring more than a dozen others, said two officials at the largest hospital in the war-torn region.

The airstrikes follow an announcement by the Tigrayan authorities on Sunday that they are ready for talks being led by the African Union (AU) to end the nearly two-year brutal war in northern Ethiopia.

On Wednesday, the Ethiopian government said it was “committed” to the AU-led peace process after the international community urged the warring factions to seize the opportunity for peace.

“The death toll has risen to 10,” Kibrom Gebreselassie, a senior official at Ayder Referral Hospital in Mekele, told AFP via text message. In a later statement, he said 14 people were injured.

Fasika Amdeslasie, a surgeon at the same hospital, confirmed the death toll, adding that two women were injured in the first bombing, followed by a second hit “on the people who had gathered to help and the victims.” see”.

“Among the victims, a father was dead and his son is undergoing surgery,” he said on Twitter.

AFP has been unable to independently verify the claims. Access to northern Ethiopia is severely restricted and Tigray has been under a communications lockdown for more than a year.

The reported attack followed another drone attack on Mekele University on Tuesday, which Tigrayan authorities said caused injuries and property damage.

Dimtsi Weyane, a TV station operated by the Tigrayan authorities, said its station was also hit on Tuesday, forcing it from the air and “causing serious human and material damage”.

“The regime in #Addis continues to resist any possibility of a peaceful solution through violent demonstrations and airstrikes,” Kindeya Gebrehiwot, a spokesman for the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), said on Twitter after Wednesday’s attacks.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government has not commented on this week’s bombings, and AFP inquiries to officials have gone unanswered.

Tigray has been bombed several times since fighting resumed between government forces and their allies in late August, and by rebels led by the TPLF, which ruled Ethiopia for decades before Abiy took office in 2018.

The return to fighting shattered a March ceasefire and dashed hopes for a peaceful resolution to the war that has killed scores of civilians and sparked a humanitarian crisis in northern Ethiopia.

Both sides have accused the other of firing first and fighting has spread from the southern Tigray to other fronts further north and west, while also attracting Eritrean troops who supported Ethiopian forces in the early stages of the war.

TPLF military chief Tadesse Worede said Tuesday: “Eritrean forces are in Sheraro,” a town in northwest Tigray where rebels said they were opposing a major offensive by Ethiopian and Eritrean troops launched earlier this month.

Frantic diplomatic efforts are underway to end the war, and new US envoy to the Horn of Africa Mike Hammer is extending his visit to Ethiopia this month.

The Tigrayan authorities’ offer to take part in the AU-led talks removed an obstacle to negotiations with Abiy’s government, which had insisted that the Addis Ababa-based pan-African bloc mediate in possible talks.

“The Ethiopian government is committed to the AU-led peace process and expressed hope that the EU would support efforts to bring the conflict to a peaceful end,” the Foreign Ministry quoted Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Demeke Mekonnen as saying on Wednesday when they met Visit of EU envoys.

It was the government’s first official statement after the Tigrayan authorities said they were ready to negotiate.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, AU Commissioner Moussa Faki Mahamat, the East African bloc IGAD and the European Union welcomed the offer from the “Tigray regional government”.

Abiy’s government has declared the TPLF a terrorist organization and considers its claim to authority in Tigray illegitimate.

The UN Human Rights Office has documented hundreds of civilian deaths from airstrikes and drone strikes, including at refugee camps, a hotel and a market.

She warned that disproportionate attacks on non-military targets could constitute war crimes.

The government has accused the TPLF of staging the deaths of civilians in airstrikes to stir up outrage and insists it only targets military installations.

Abiy, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, sent troops to Tigray to overthrow the TPLF in November 2020 in response to attacks on federal army camps, he said.

But the TPLF retook most of Tigray in a surprise comeback in June 2021.

It then expanded into the neighboring regions of Afar and Amhara before fighting reached a stalemate.