United Nations, Nov 12 (IANS): Several hundred Ethiopians have crossed to Sudan to escape fighting in Ethiopia's northern Tigray regional state, the United Nations (UN) said.

In a report, the UN refugee agency, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said several hundred Ethiopian asylum seekers have entered Sudan's eastern Gedaref region.

"As of 8:00 am on November 11, UNHCR is aware of more than several hundred asylum seekers at two border entry points in Sudan's Gedaref state," said the UNHCR report.

"UNHCR is mobilizing resources to provide life-saving assistance services to the new arrivals," further said the UNHCR report.

Since November 4, the Ethiopian government had been undertaking military operations against the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), the ruling party in Ethiopia's northernmost Tigray region, and now in an official war against the federal government that followed TPLF's reported attack against the Northern command of the Ethiopian Defence Force, a division that has been stationed in the region for over two decades, Xinhua reported.

The Ethiopian government has been blaming the TPLF, which was one of the four coalition fronts of Ethiopia's former ruling party the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), for masterminding various treasonous acts across different parts of the country with an overarching goal of destabilizing the East African country.

Three of the former four EPRDF coalition members had last year joined other regional parties in establishing the Prosperity Party, as the TPLF refused to join.

The mounting differences between the federal government and TPLF exacerbated in September this year, when the Tigray regional government decided to go with its planned regional elections, which the Ethiopian parliament had previously postponed due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.