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Increasing worries are present over the potential of armed conflict involving East African neighbours, Ethiopia and Eritrea, as confrontational language has escalated in the past few weeks.

What Has Ethiopian Officials Declared?

Landlocked Ethiopia's calls for entry to the maritime outlet through Eritrean territory has triggered a intense verbal exchange.

PM Abiy Ahmed previously announced in last year that his country's maritime access was an crucial concern, comments that Eritrea ignored.

Diplomatic connections between the two countries have regularly been difficult. After a long-standing struggle for freedom, the Eritrean state, which has a 1,350km (840-mile) Red Sea coastline, formally separated from Ethiopia in 1993, leaving it cut off from the sea.

In 1998, a territorial conflict broke out in which numerous people died.

Latest Comments from Ethiopian Leadership

Abiy and army chief the army commander have publicly asserted control of Eritrean maritime facility of Assab – about 60km from the border - and implied the intention to seize it militarily.

Recently, the Prime Minister said the country's "blunder" of being denied passage to the Red Sea as a result of Eritrea secession would be "rectified tomorrow".

The Ethiopian envoy to neighboring Kenya, retired Gen Bacha Debele, said that Assab was "Ethiopia's wealth" and would be given back "using武力".

Eritrean Answer to the Claims

Amid ongoing warnings from Ethiopia, Eritrea's response has been confined to short statements on social media from Information Minister the minister.

Officials have denied Ethiopia's demand for maritime entry describing it as "risky" and a "toxic agenda" of "territorial claims" – a approach of claiming back former lands.

Eritrean authorities warned on 16 September that attempts to validate "flagrant aggression" would have serious consequences for Ethiopia and its neighbors and is a "boundary that should not be crossed|violated|breached".

Defense Movements on the Border

Currently, there are few indications of major military movements in the boundary zones between the both nations.

Nevertheless, in Ethiopia, government media has displayed training completions of many recruits at various military training camps.

The head of personnel division of the defense force, the officer, commented lately in an discussion that the army was in a "secure situation" as "many thousands of recruits" were joining it, which he said was "a message to our opponents".

Previous Roots of the Conflict

For decades from 1890, Eritrea was governed by Italian rulers.

After Italy's defeat, it was then controlled by the British administration before turning into a federated part of the Ethiopian empire.

Yet in the early 1960s the Ethiopian emperor ended this system and the region became totally absorbed into Ethiopia.

A three-decade long internal conflict occurred, concluding with military reversal in 1991. Independence was then approved by the population in a referendum in 1993.

Briefly in the 1990s, there were positive ties between the authorities in Addis Ababa and Asmara, but they disagreed over the precise positioning of their common border, leading to hostilities in 1998.

Although this finished in a ceasefire agreement in 2000, it was incompletely executed, and the two nations stayed at odds.

This situation improved in 2018, when Abiy made overtures to Eritrean President the president. The two signed a announcement that the war was concluded – a decision that gained Abiy the Nobel Peace Prize.

The both administrations were then cooperators in Ethiopia's recent armed struggle in the northern region.

Yet ties have since broken down anew.