Ethiopia reports fighting on all fronts

Eritrean refugees with bags of dates at a camp in Sudan

Ethiopia says fighting has resumed on all fronts in its border war with Eritrea, despite continuing peace talks in Algeria.

The fresh clashes erupted less than a week after Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi declared that the war was over.

An Ethiopian Government statement said Ethiopian aircraft had bombed Eritrean positions on the eastern Bure front, where there was also a heavy exchange of artillery fire.

The statement said there were also clashes in western Eritrea, as Ethiopian troops were withdrawing towards Himora.

Both sides meanwhile exchanged heavy artillery fire near Senafe on the central front, the statement said, accusing Eritrean troops of provoking the fighting.

Fighting near Red Sea port

Earlier on Monday, Eritrean officials said intensive artillery exchanges with Ethiopian forces began just after dawn on the eastern front close to the Red Sea port of Assab, following a fierce battle at the weekend.

"There is heavy shelling and movements of their aircraft," said Yemane Gebremeskel, an adviser to the Eritrean president. "We are just responding and defending our positions."

Eritrea says landlocked Ethiopia wants to win back Assab

Diplomats in Addis Ababa said they had reports that the fighting was taking place about 10km (six miles) from Assab.

Indirect peace talks via mediators continued in Algeria on Monday.

Both sides presented their views on a revised peace document put forward by Algeria's special envoy Ahmed Ouyahia, representing the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), Algerian TV reported.

Ethiopian troops pushed deep inside Eritrea in a three-week-old offensive which began in early May.

Victims of war

Prime Minister Meles says his army's offensive has achieved its objective of forcing Eritrea's withdrawal from all pockets of disputed border territory it occupied soon after the war first broke out in May 1998.

But Eritrea says there can be no ceasefire until Ethiopia pulls out of the territory it has now occupied.

Analysts estimate the two-year-old border war has cost more than 100,000 lives.

Up to 750,000 Eritreans are thought to have fled their homes and farms during the Ethiopian advance, and some 60,000 of them have poured across the border into neighbouring Sudan.