The phrase “fog of war” is often used to describe the state of confusion on the battlefield, but when it comes to Ethiopia, it is easy to apply the phrase to the fierce information war in the context of the escalating conflict between the Tigray rebels and government forces.

When the BBC was recently offered an interview with teenagers allegedly caught fighting for insurgents, we cautiously accepted the offer.

“I was playing football with friends when I was forcibly recruited by the Tigrayan fighters to join their ranks,” a 17-year-old told us on the phone from Afar, a state that borders Tigray province.

The conflict began in Tigray, northern Ethiopia, in November, but has since spread to the neighboring states of Afar and Amhara, where Tigray People’s Liberation Front rebels recently took control of Lalibela, a town famous for its rock-cut churches.

“I was forcibly taken to the battlefront,” said another teenager who told us he was in the 10th grade at Tigray School. “My family couldn’t say anything because the family members were afraid for their lives,” he added.

“We didn’t get any military training,” said a 19-year-old woman. They took us to Afar. They threatened to kill our family if we did not join the fight.”

The teenage boys told us that about 50 teenage boys and girls were rounded up near Mekele, the capital of Tigray, and forced to fight, before being captured by the regional forces of Afar State, allied with the federal government.

The first indication that something was wrong was when the Afar state authorities, who offered us the interviews, insisted that we do them in Amharic – the lingua franca of Ethiopia – and not in their mother tongue, Tigrinya.

Then when we carefully listened to the recordings, our suspicions were confirmed – we could sometimes hear the regional authority’s spokesman telling the teenagers what to say.

Similar interviews were broadcast on local Ethiopian television, with teenagers slowly passing by the cameras looking like bored high school students, some with wounds apparently sustained in combat.

The conflict began in November following months of animosity between Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, once the dominant party in the federal government, over the prime minister’s reform programme.

Forces from Eritrea also entered the war on Abiy Ahmed’s side.

The Prime Minister accused the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) of becoming a terrorist organization, while the TPLF insisted that it was the legitimate government in its native Tigray region.

The Ethiopian government accuses the Tigrayan fighters of using child soldiers since they regained control of Mekele last June, eight months after the government forces took control of it.

The New York Times had published a story about this major turning point in the war that included photographs of Tigris fighters, some of whom appeared to be underage.

The newspaper described them as “extremely passionate young recruits” who draw their inspiration from “the list of horrors that have marked this war – massacres, ethnic cleansing and extreme sexual violence”.

Since then, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and his army of supporters active on social media have accused the Tigrayan rebels of conscripting child soldiers, drugging them and pushing them to the front lines of the fight.

TPLF spokesperson Getachew Reda denied that teenagers are being forced to join the TPLF’s ranks.

He told the BBC: “If there is a problem with teenagers – 17, 18, 19, although 18 is the legal age to join the army – these are children whose parents have been subjected to unspeakable suffering at the hands of the Eritreans, Abi Ahmed’s forces and the Amharic expansionists.” .

“We don’t have to force people,” he added. We have hundreds of thousands of people lining up to fight.”

Government officials and rights groups have also accused Tigrayan fighters of committing atrocities, including the killing of hundreds of ethnic Amharas in western Tigray at the start of the conflict.

Earlier this month, a heavy artillery attack was reported on a health center in Afar.

Soon, social media was ignited with allegations that more than 100 people had been killed at the hands of the Tigris fighters, and the label of the Afar massacre began to spread rapidly.

The BBC spoke to a doctor at a local hospital who said 12 people brought to the hospital died of their injuries, but no one was able to give us an official death toll at the scene.

The rebels denied the attack took place and said they would welcome an investigation.

mysterious war

Claims and counterclaims about every turn of the war are being shared all day long on Twitter and Facebook – by the government, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front and their supporters in Ethiopia and the diaspora.

With telephone and internet lines cut off across Tigray for about two months now, getting information from the region is almost impossible.

The federal government says the lines of communication will not be restored until the rebels accept a ceasefire.

Tigris fighters say they will not accept a ceasefire until the siege is lifted and all hostile forces have left the area.

“The federal government is determined to control information, and Tigris leaders are not in any way reluctant to use propaganda warfare,” says Will Davison, Ethiopia analyst at the International Crisis Group.

In addition, he adds, the Ethiopian media and civil society are relatively weak when it comes to revealing who is doing this or that. Therefore, there are several factors that contribute to the ambiguity of this war.”

Getting aid to Tigray – where experts say hundreds of thousands of people face catastrophic levels of hunger – has been another major battleground in the information war.

When the Tekkezi bridge was blown up on 1 July, removing a major aid route into the area and one of the few access roads to western Tigray, the federal government blamed the Tigray People’s Liberation Front.

But Davison says the accusation doesn’t make sense.

He wonders: “The Tigrayan forces were on the offensive after the withdrawal of the federal forces, and they wanted to re-establish their control over western Tigray and restore their access to aid, trade and vital services. Why are they destroying a vital crossing on the river?”

“However, the Amharic and Federal forces were trying to isolate Tigray after the withdrawal, and wanted to hold on to western Tigray, so they have every reason to destroy the bridge,” he adds.

Thousands have been killed since the start of the war and millions more have been displaced. Both sides were accused of human rights violations.

Abiy Ahmed, in the wake of the TPLF’s recent gains, called on “all able Ethiopians” to join the fight against the rebels.

It seems that political dialogue is still a long way off. There does not seem to be any indication that the information war is on the way to abating either.