\nThe first commercial flight to\u00a0Eritrea\u00a0in two decades departed this morning from\u00a0Addis Ababa,\u00a0barely a week after the two nations ended their conflict following a whirlwind peace process.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ethiopian Airlines\u00a0said that flight ET0312 to\u00a0Asmara\u00a0had departed Bole International Airport, after a ceremony inaugurating the historic flight.<\/p>\n

“This day marks a unique event in the history of\u00a0Ethiopia\u00a0and Eritrea,” the airline’s\u00a0chief executive\u00a0Tewolde GebreMariam said at the ceremony.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Overwhelming demand saw the African aviation giant operate two flights within 15 minutes of each other.<\/p>\n

“The fact that we are taking two flights at a time shows the eagerness of the people,” said GebreMariam.<\/p>\n

Champagne was served to passengers in all classes, who were also given roses shortly before take-off.<\/p>\n

Once a province of Ethiopia,\u00a0Eritrea\u00a0seceded in 1993 after a long independence struggle. A row over the demarcation of the shared border triggered a brutal 1998-2000 conflict which left 80,000 people dead before evolving into a bitter cold war.<\/p>\n

In a surprise move, Ethiopia’s new\u00a0reformist Prime Minister\u00a0Abiy Ahmed paid a historic visit to Eritrea, during which he and\u00a0President\u00a0Isaias Afwerki\u00a0declared an official end to the war. Afwerki reciprocated with a state visit to\u00a0Ethiopia\u00a0just days later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first commercial flight to\u00a0Eritrea\u00a0in two decades departed this morning from\u00a0Addis Ababa,\u00a0barely a week after the two nations ended their conflict following a whirlwind peace process. Ethiopian Airlines\u00a0said that flight ET0312 to\u00a0Asmara\u00a0had departed Bole International Airport, after a ceremony inaugurating the historic flight. “This day marks a unique event in the history of\u00a0Ethiopia\u00a0and Eritrea,” the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":11502,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-embassy-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/DiYaTnGW4AAdOOp.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11499"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11503,"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11499\/revisions\/11503"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}