Ethiopia’s Tigray regional government fired rockets late Friday at two airports in the nearby Amhara region, the Ethiopian and Tigray regional governments said.
In a statement on Tigray TV, the Tigray regional government said attacks would continue “unless the attacks against us stop.”
The federal government confirmed the attacks, saying in a statement, “A rocket was fired towards Bahir Dar & Gondar cities. As a result, the airport areas have sustained damages.”
The Ethiopian army has been battling local forces in the neighboring northern Tigray region for more than a week.
Hundreds have been killed since Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sent the national defense force into Tigray November 4, after accusing local forces there of attacking a military base.
More than 14,500 Ethiopians have fled to Sudan and the U.N. refugee agency says more people are on their way.
On Friday, The U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Michelle Bachelet, expressed alarm at the rapidly deteriorating situation in Tigray.
Her spokesman, Rupert Colville, said Bachelet was particularly disturbed by an Amnesty International report of alleged mass killings in the town of Mai-Kadra in southwest Tigray.
Amnesty said photographs and videos of the scene indicate hundreds of people were stabbed or hacked to death. It says the victims appeared to have been day laborers, who were not involved in military operations.
The Tigray People’s Liberation Front has denied that scores or hundreds of people had been “hacked to death” in Mai-Kadra.
Colville said the high commissioner was fearful of the consequences if Tigray and Ethiopia fail to heed her warning. If fighting continues, he said, Bachelet feared the conflict could easily spill across borders, potentially destabilizing parts of East Africa.