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SpeakOut.com Expands International News Coverage
Exclusive Field Reporting on East Africa Conflict

WASHINGTON, D.C. - May 25, 2000 - As part of its on-going effort to provide thorough and independent news and content to its users, Speakout.com has expanded its international news coverage to include on the scene dispatches from the border conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea.

SpeakOut.com staff writer, Jason Vest reports today from Debat, Eritrea, on the Ethiopian-Eritrean conflict where Ethiopia has opened new fronts along the 620-mile frontier with Eritrea. Thousands of refugees are streaming away from the war zone to take cover among thorn trees and scrub brush in the desert region of Debat--doubling the population of the area, according to aid agency estimates.

The Ethiopian-Eritrean conflict is at present the largest conventional war in the world with an estimated 500,000 refugees. Most of the refugees are flooding into temporary camps; tens of thousands have already walked into neighboring Sudan. Each country claims to have inflicted heavy casualties on the other, but neither will confirm details about its own losses. Vest and other observers are reporting that the actual number is close to 10,000. Whatever the exact number of dead over the past two weeks, it comes in addition to some 70,000 estimated killed since the war began two years ago.

The bloodiest fighting reported to date occurred at Zalambessa, a heavily fortified border region where the Eritreans were defending a maze of trenches and artillery positions. Ethiopian officials in Addis Ababa said Tuesday that capturing Zalambessa was essential to their plan to dismantle the Eritrean army and retake the territory in dispute since Ethiopia granted Eritrean independence.

Both nations are in the grip of a three-year-old drought. While everyone from UNICEF to the Red Cross to Medicins san Frontiers are bringing in aid, the sudden need for more water has strained the aid efforts.

A former associate editor for US News & World Report's business and investigative staffs and former Village Voice writer, Jason Vest is a national correspondent for Speakout.com.

About SpeakOut.com

Based in Washington, DC, Speakout.com is a new non-partisan Internet activism Web site whose primary mission is to enhance the democratic process by enabling citizens to make a direct impact on the decisions that affect their lives. Officially launched in February 2000, SpeakOut.com users enjoy a wide variety of news and information content tailored to their interests and activism tools allowing aggregated messaging to a vast array of public officeholders, candidates, business leaders and news executives.

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