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Increasing concerns exist over the chance of warfare between Horn of Africa neighbours, Ethiopia and Eritrea, as hostile rhetoric has escalated in the last month.

What Did Ethiopia Stated?

Ethiopia's, being landlocked, calls for entry to the sea coast through Eritrea has sparked a heated war of words.

Ethiopian Prime Minister previously announced in the previous year that his government's maritime access was an vital issue, remarks that Eritrea rejected.

Relations between the neighboring nations have frequently been strained. Following a decades-long struggle for freedom, the Eritrean state, which has a extensive Red Sea coastline, officially seceded from Ethiopia in the early 1990s, rendering it cut off from the sea.

Five years later, a border war started in which more than 100,000 people died.

Current Remarks from Ethiopia's Leadership

Prime Minister Abiy and military leader General Birhanu Jula have publicly asserted ownership of Eritrean southern port of the port of Assab – some 60 km from the boundary - and hinted at the wish to seize it militarily.

Recently, Abiy said the country's "error" of losing access to the Red Sea as a due to Eritrea's separation would be "corrected soon".

Ethiopia's ambassador to Kenya, retired Gen Bacha Debele, said that the port was "Ethiopia's wealth" and would be returned "by force".

Eritrean Answer to the Claims

Despite continuous challenges from Ethiopian officials, Asmara's position has been confined to brief comments on X from Information Minister Yemane G..

The minister has dismissed Ethiopia's push for sea access describing it as "hazardous" and a "toxic agenda" of "expansionism" – a policy of claiming back former lands.

The information ministry alerted on recently that efforts to validate "obvious provocation" would have major implications for Ethiopia and its neighbors and is a "limit that should not be crossed|violated|breached".

Security Movements on the Region

Currently, there are no reports of significant troop deployments in the frontier regions between the two countries.

Nevertheless, in Ethiopia, national TV has shown training completions of numerous trainees at different defense facilities.

The leader of human resources department of the defense force, the officer, recently said in an interview that the army was in a "reliable position" as "numerous of youths" were entering service, which he said was "a message to our enemies".

Previous Roots of the Dispute

For more than half a century from 1890, the territory was governed by Italian colonisers.

Following Italy's defeat, it was then managed by the British administration before turning into a federated part of Ethiopia.

Yet in 1962 Emperor Haile Selassie I ended this system and Eritrea became fully incorporated into Ethiopia.

A thirty-year civil war occurred, finishing with military reversal in the early 1990s. Autonomy was then endorsed by voters in a referendum in 1993.

Temporarily in the 1990s, there were friendly connections between the leadership in Addis Ababa and Eritrea's capital, but they disagreed over the precise positioning of their shared boundary, resulting in war in 1998.

Even though this finished in a peace deal in 2000, it was never fully implemented, and the two nations stayed at in dispute.

This situation improved in 2018, when the Prime Minister made overtures to Eritrea's leader Isaias Afwerki. The two agreed to a statement that the war was finished – a move that gained Abiy the Nobel Peace Prize.

The two governments were then allies in Ethiopia's previous civil war in Tigray.

Yet relations have later worsened again.