Fighting has resumed between Ethiopia and a region within Ethiopia called Tigray as talks of peace are being pushed to stop the violence.

As the war continues to rage on, countries near Ethiopia have joined in the fight against Tigray. The main country helping Ethiopia is Eritrean. According to the diplomats and analysts, Eritrea has deployed three waves over the past couple of days. Overall, the north area of the Tigray region has been hit the hardest since the violence started up again and the people there are paying a price.

A meeting was set up to be held this past week between the groups to talk about peace. However, the U.S. and other officials confirmed that this meeting had been unsuccessful, and no results were produced.

This is not the first time a meeting was set up to talk about putting a stop to the fighting. The interest of talking to each other still remains between the two groups.

“We seem to be trending towards a launch of talks,” President Joe Biden’s special envoy for the Horn of Africa Mike Hammer said, “It is urgent that talks happen to stop the fighting, alleviate the suffering and find a way forward for resolving outstanding issues through dialogue.”

Senior associate at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies Cameron Hudson also commented. “The fact that the Ethiopian military is willfully targeting civilian infrastructure in Mekelle is a signal that it is seeking to punish and terrorize Tigrayans rather than simply defeating them militarily,” Hudson said. “It makes the notion of a political settlement that much harder.”

This fighting that is currently happening is because of a war between Ethiopia and Tigray that has been going on since 2020. Many military members and people of the community have joined the war effort. It is estimated that about 500,000 have perished during the whole time period of the war, according to researchers at Ghent University in Belgium.

The war broke out between the two groups because Addis Ababa believed that the Tigray people invaded a federal military base. Since this event the war continued on as each side tried to infiltrate each other. However, a truce was made during a brief period of the war. This was helpful because aid could be given during that time. This truce lasted about five months and has since been broken this past August as the fighting resumed.

The U.S. continues to encourage both sides to go through with a cease-fire. There is no mention in the article of the next steps toward getting Ethiopia and Tigray to stop all war efforts.