Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed told Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on Monday that officers implicated in war crimes were evacuated to the country, Israel's Channel 13 news reported.
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Citing a security source, Channel 13 said at least four of those evacuated to Israel were officers who engaged in war crimes, with at least one of those involved in a massacre that took place in Ethiopia's Tigray region.
Israel recently opened an investigation after discovering that several people who had arrived in the country from Ethiopia in recent months lied about their Jewish heritage and the dangers they faced in their birth country.
Ethiopia is facing a dire humanitarian situation amid a conflict between Ethiopia's government and the Tigray People's Liberation Front, and many countries are calling on their citizens to leave the area.
The African Union's envoy for the Horn of Africa warned Monday that there is a short "window of opportunity" and little time to reverse the crisis in the country's north, which has drastically deteriorated in recent weeks amid an escalating offensive by Tigray forces against the government.
Olusegun Obasanjo told the UN Security Council that after talks with Ethiopia's president and prime minister, and the presidents of the Tigray and Oromo regions whose forces are fighting government troops, he can say that they all "agree individually that the differences between them are political and require political solution through dialogue."
Obasanjo and US envoy Jeffrey Feltman have been holding urgent talks in search of a cease-fire in the year-old war that has killed thousands.
Feltman returned to Ethiopia from Kenya on Monday and US State Department spokesman Ned Price also said "we believe there is a small window of opening" to work with Obasanjo "to further joint efforts to peacefully resolve the conflict."
Israel's Foreign Ministry issued a travel warning last week for Ethiopia, urging Israelis to avoid unnecessary travel to the destination. Citizens already there were also asked to shorten their stay and avoid areas of conflict.
Although the Ethiopian government denied any threat to Addis Ababa, authorities in the capital asked residents to organize to defend the city.
The TPLF and the Oromo Liberation Army – the rebel factions fighting Ethiopia's government – last week claimed responsibility for the capture of several strategic towns in the Amhara region.
Meanwhile, Israel's Population and Immigration Authority described its operation to secretly detain dozens of Ethiopian citizens after their immigration as a "planned conspiracy that exploited the system," the Haaretz daily reported.
An examination by the Population Authority revealed that 53 out of 61 who arrived from Ethiopia came at the request of a private Israeli citizen, who wanted to bring his ex-wife and people who ran his business to Israel.
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"The feeling that was received was that a planned conspiracy had been created here that took advantage of the system," read the summary of the official document, signed by the director of the Temporary Populations Division in the Population Administration, Michal Yosefoff, according to the report.
However, official sources in Jerusalem claimed the Population Authority's investigation was conducted recklessly and without talking to senior members in the country's Ethiopian community who could attest to the immigrants' Jewish roots.
Whether these families are Jewish or not, they will remain in the country, senior government sources reportedly said.
This article was first published by i24NEWS.
