Wednesday, June 10, 1998;
FROM SAM KILEY IN ZALAMBESSA
Times of London

ETHIOPIAN forces launched a three-wave offensive to recapture the border town of Zalambessa yesterday, bombarding Eritreans dug into trenches with a massive pre-dawn artillery barrage followed by an infantry assault and more heavy gunfire.

The attack caught the Eritreans by surprise after two days of relative calm and they appeared to be on the verge of losing the town, but they swiftly recovered to mount a counter-attack, and by nightfall the battle was theirs.

"The Ethiopian offensive began at 5.30am this morning," the Eritrean Foreign Ministry said in a terse statement that did little justice to what observers believe is the biggest battle so far.

The countryside was turned into a First World War scene of devastated buildings, churned earth, and bodies. Farm land had been carved into winding trenches, and these changed hands at least twice during 12 hours of fighting yesterday.

Shells smashed into the ground one after another in a deadly game of chase as an Eritrean tank scuttled through rocky fields and hid behind shattered buildings. Missiles and mortar bombs rained down on infantrymen, sending shards of white hot shrapnel hissing through the air. The mere sound of battle was enough to stupefy.

The Ethiopian offensive had been launched after the Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, ordered his forces to retake Zalambessa. They responded to the command with a heavy artillery attack before dawn, then at first light, infantrymen streamed over a steep escarpment to overrun the first line of Eritrean trenches in spite of coming under fire from tanks and artillery behind the Eritrean main front. Still more heavy guns completed the Ethiopian assault.

Within minutes of the first attack, BM-21 missile launchers known as Stalin Organs were sending a deluge of rockets into the Ethiopian ranks. Tanks and armour hit by shells exploded with a flash, followed by the scream of tearing metal.

By midday, a full-scale Eritrean counter-attack was under way as veterans of the country's 30-year war for independence and younger soldiers fighting for their new nation for the first time struggled up a hill to reclaim their captured trenches.

The battle won, there was no mistaking the distant and drawn expressions of the young fighters returning from the fray. Standing in the back of a white truck daubed with mud in a crude effort at camouflage, a group of about ten young men gripped the metal sides of the vehicle and stared into space with a mixture of exhaustion and shock.

Leaving Ethiopian dead in the field, the Eritreans began to gather their wounded and take them the 15 miles to a makeshift military hospital in Senafe. Their own dead were put on to stretchers by their comrades, who preferred to carry the corpses for miles rather than leave them to rot alongside their enemies.

Other young men wandered back into Senafe in sweat and dirt-stained combat fatigues, silent, and sullen. They walked stiffly into a local bar, still taut with the tension of battle.

A pickup truck crammed with wounded flashed by, its grim cargo waving bandaged limbs as it raced by to a hospital.

Eritrean military commanders said that the Ethiopian attacked "had been repulsed," but that they were expecting another attempt to retake Zalambessa.

Yesterday the last 100 American diplomats and Ethiopian citizens were to be flown out of the Eritrean capital, Asmara, after warnings from Ethiopia that it would launch more air raids on the city. President Afewerki said that he had been personally warned to leave his residence, which said that his home would be a target. "A bleak escalation of the conflict on the ground is the problem, but we are willing to discuss peace," he said.

The latest flare-up comes after a call by Eritrea on Monday for direct talks between the two former friends and for high-level mediators to help. Mr Afewerki criticised attempts to achieve a "quick fix" through a deal brokered by Rwanda and Susan Rice, the American Assistant Secretary of State. "The problem with the peace process is the hasty way it was managed by the Americans. They believe in quick fixes and bulldozing and that does not work. It is not in our culture."