The Ethiopian military has seized the town of Alamata, in the southern Tigray region, the state-owned Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation reported on Sunday, amid a 12 days conflict in the Tigray region.

“The Ethiopian National Defense Force and the Amhara Special Forces have fully captured the town of Alamata and surrounding towns, Waja and Tumuga as a part of the continuation of government’s military response against the robber TPLF special forces,” EBC reported.

Locals told EBC that the liberation from the “would end the human rights abuse militant TPLF group has been perpeuting against them”.

Alamata is located in the south of Tigray, near the borders with Amhara and most of the town’s 70,000 are Raya ethnic group. Though the Raya people see themselves as a united people with their own proper identity and shared history, the Raya territory has been placed under the jurisdiction of Tigray and Amhara regional states, when Ethiopia was divided into a federation along ethno-linguistic lines in 1992. While the northern segment commonly known as Raya-Azebo currently forms the southernmost territory of the Tigray regional state, the other half, also commonly known as Raya-Kobbo, is today part of the Amhara regional state.