{"id":34265,"date":"2021-12-05T12:09:13","date_gmt":"2021-12-05T20:09:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/?p=34265"},"modified":"2021-12-05T12:09:14","modified_gmt":"2021-12-05T20:09:14","slug":"ethiopia-closes-schools-to-boost-civil-war-effort","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/ethiopia-closes-schools-to-boost-civil-war-effort\/","title":{"rendered":"Ethiopia closes schools to boost civil war effort"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Ethiopian authorities have closed all secondary schools so pupils can harvest crops for those on the frontline of the civil war, state-affiliated media says.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The closure will last for one week, according to the education minister.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than 2 million pupils were already out of school due to the war which started in the northern region of Tigray last year, the government says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the fighting intensifies, government troops say they are taking towns from the Tigray rebels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Wednesday state forces announced they had recaptured the historic town of Lalibela<\/a>, which contains churches that are Unesco world heritage sites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an interview with the BBC, an Ethiopian army commander said the country’s defence forces would not relent in their advances after recent gains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I cannot say we will pause once we reach Mekelle [Tigray’s capital] or other places, rather we will recapture areas at the hands of Woyane [the Tigray People’s Liberation Front]. We will follow and get rid of them,” Lt-Gen Bacha Debele said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The war has caused a humanitarian crisis with more than 300 schools that teach grade one to 12 destroyed as of October, according to a statement on the Ministry of Education’s Facebook account.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The government will work to restore the destroyed schools, the statement continued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The war intensified after Tigray fighters said they were advancing towards the capital Addis Ababa in November.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They also launched an offensive to reach the Djibouti border in the east – which is crucial for getting supplies to landlocked Ethiopia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This led to Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed saying he would join the war effort on the frontline, where he has since been pictured by state TV.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The TPLF has said it made a “strategic withdrawal” from some the areas which the army says it has recaptured.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ethiopian authorities have closed all secondary schools so pupils can harvest crops for those on the frontline of the civil war, state-affiliated media says. The closure will last for one week, according to the education minister. More than 2 million pupils were already out of school due to the war which started in the northern […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":754,"featured_media":34266,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[269],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cww7news.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/ethiopia-flag-SBI-300620379.jpg?fit=700%2C509&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34265"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/754"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34265"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34267,"href":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34265\/revisions\/34267"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}