Increasing worries have emerged about the potential of warfare involving Horn of Africa neighbours, the Ethiopian government and the Eritrean government, as confrontational language has intensified in recent weeks.
Ethiopia's, being landlocked, calls for passage to the Red Sea through Eritrean territory has provoked a intense verbal exchange.
PM Abiy Ahmed initially stated publicly in last year that his country's maritime access was an existential matter, comments that Eritrean authorities rejected.
Relations between the neighboring nations have often been tense. Following a decades-long fight for sovereignty, Eritrea, which has a long Red Sea coastline, formally separated from Ethiopian rule in the early 1990s, making it cut off from the sea.
Five years later, a military clash broke out in which numerous people were killed.
Abiy and military leader Field Marshal Birhanu Jula have openly claimed ownership of Eritrean maritime facility of the port of Assab – about 60km from the frontier - and hinted at the intention to capture it through military means.
On 1 September, the Prime Minister said the country's "blunder" of losing entry to the sea as a because of Eritrea's separation would be "corrected soon".
Ethiopia's ambassador to Kenya, ex-military officer Bacha, said that Assab was "Ethiopian property" and would be given back "using武力".
Despite ongoing threats from Ethiopia, Asmara's position has been restricted to short statements on X from Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel.
He has rejected Ethiopia's demand for maritime entry calling it "dangerous" and a "harmful plan" of "territorial claims" – a strategy of reclaiming lost territory.
The information ministry alerted on mid-September that moves to legitimise "obvious provocation" would have significant repercussions for Ethiopia and its regional partners and is a "limit that should not be crossed|violated|breached".
Currently, there are little evidence of major military movements in the boundary zones between the two countries.
However, in the country, state television has shown training completions of many recruits at different defense facilities.
The director of personnel division of the military, Lt Gen Hachalu Sheleme, commented lately in an conversation that the defense forces was in a "strong stance" as "tens of thousands of youths" were enlisting, which he said was "a signal to our opponents".
For decades from the late 19th century, the territory was administered by colonial powers.
After Italy's defeat, it was then administered by the UK forces before becoming a associated territory of the Ethiopian empire.
But in the early 1960s the ruler terminated this agreement and Eritrea became fully incorporated into Ethiopia.
A extended armed struggle followed, finishing with the government's loss in the early 1990s. Autonomy was then endorsed by Eritreans in a vote in 1993.
Briefly in the 1990s, there were friendly connections between the leadership in Addis Ababa and Asmara, but they fell out over the precise positioning of their common border, resulting in conflict in 1998.
Though this concluded in a ceasefire agreement in 2000, it was never fully implemented, and the two nations remained at odds.
This changed in 2018, when Abiy made approaches to Eritrea's leader the president. The two agreed to a declaration that the hostilities was concluded – a action that earned the Prime Minister the prestigious award.
The neighboring states were then partners in the country's previous civil war in the northern region.
However diplomatic connections have subsequently deteriorated once more.
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