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Ethiopian troops are reinforcing their positions in western Eritrea, after making a major push across the border in the latest offensive in the war between the two countries. A BBC correspondent who visited the captured town of Shambiko said it had been virtually destroyed and was littered with corpses.

Interviewer: Well yesterday the Ethiopian government took the BBC’s Rageh Omar up to the frontline to show him the gains that they have made. And early this morning I spoke to Rageh to get the details. He started by telling me where exactly he was.

Rageh Omar: I am just inside what was the Ethiopian lines of the frontline. I am in a town right on the border, on the Mereb river just inside Ethiopia. But all of yesterday I was taken by the Ethiopian military right across the frontline. It’s 12 kilometers of trenches dug into the arid, barren hillsides. Absolutely massive and impressive fortifications that had been built by the Eritreans and was their frontlines. Those are now completely deserted and empty. We see used, sort of shell casings where the Eritrean forces had taken up positions. And we were taken up there in an Ethiopian military helicopter because they have free use of the air.

And we went on the ground to visit these front line trenches and went into an Eritrean town called Shambiko, which was absolutely devastated. There wasn’t any civilians they had completely evacuated. And it was now a garrison town full of Ethiopian soldiers, their hardware, and trucks moving them further deeper into Eritrea to the areas where the battles are now taking place on the western front.

Question:Now you say Rageh that the Eritrean civilians have deserted the area. What about the troops. Any sign of any Eritrean troops there?

Rageh Omar: We saw no sign at all of any Eritrean soldiers. Corpses were littering the battlefieds where the Eritrean soldiers had died. There was also just a lot of ammunition stores that we visited. One dug deep into a sort of little hillside full of tank shells. The Ethiopian soldiers were loading up truckfulls of these tank shells and taking them straight to the front. Everything that can be used and stripped from the Eritrean forces that have retreated are being stripped.

Question: You mentioned Rageh that you saw corpses strewn around. Were you given any casualty figures?

Rageh Omar: No. We weren’t. And in fact we put this to a senior Ethiopian military commander who has been overseeing the military operations here on the western front, and we put to him the Eritrean assertion that despite whatever gains that Ethiopia has made it was been at a huge cost in lives. But he said that it wasn’t at all. He said that the speed and the extent to which they had taken the ground and the positions of the Eritrean forces was a clear indication that they had been able to take the military initiative without much loss of life. It’s impossible to verify certainly the huge number of statistics on both sides, of losses stretching into thousands and tens of thousands all along the different fronts. But all that we did see in the localized areas of the battle here on the western front was the Eritrean dead.

Question: Now the Eritreans have told the UN that they will agree to a ceasefire. What about the Ethiopians? Will they or are they keen to continue this offensive?

Rageh Omar: Well all that they have said so far of course formally, is that they will at least consider the modalities of a potential ceasefire. But here on the ground I have to say that it is hard to see how the Ethiopians will accept a ceasefire now given that the military momentum is quite clearly on their side. It would be asking them to abandon all that they have gained. And speaking again to senior Ethiopian military commanders, their priority is to destroy the Eritrean army as much as they can and all military operations are dictated by that. Because once this war is over and the Ethiopians have captured territory they are going to have to hand that back over to Eritrea. Now they are not going to hand it back over to an Eritrean government that is still a potential military threat. That seems to be their calculation.