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The Ethiopian parliament agreed Wednesday to remove the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) from an official list of terrorist groups, a key step to advancing a peace process following the two-year civil conflict in the country’s north that killed hundreds of thousands, Bloomberg reported.
Lawmakers approved a resolution to delist the TPLF, a decision that came four months after a ceasefire between the group and government forces.
Parliament had designated the TPLF as a terrorist group in May 2021, six months after its forces and government troops began fighting in the northern Tigray region. The civil conflict drew in neighboring Eritrea and is estimated to have displaced more than two million, according to Radio France Internationale.
The war ended following the November peace deal between the TPLF and the federal government led by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. Under the deal, Tigrayan forces agreed to disarm in exchange for restored access to Tigray, which was largely cut off from the outside world during the war.
Observers noted that the removal of the terrorist designation marks another important step in upholding the peace agreement.
The change in designation came two days after the US State Department announced that all groups involved in the conflict had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Ethiopian and Eritrean officials dismissed the US findings.
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