Ambassador James Morgan Pitia, South Sudan's Minister Foregin Affairs. (Photo: File/ COURTESY)

The South Sudan Ambassador to Ethiopia said Wednesday he does not have the power and means to evacuate the South Sudanese students who are stuck in the violence-hit Amhara region.

On Tuesday, sixty-five South Sudanese Students under Ethiopia’s government scholarship called for their evacuation after fighting intensified between a militia group and the Federal army in the Amhara region.

The dozens of students in Gondar and Bahir Dar Universities desperately voiced concerns over their safety in a Tuesday interview with Eye Radio.

They said the fighting confined them to the university premises.

According to the scholars, local markets, banks, and Automated Teller Machine services were closed because of the insecurity.

They criticized South Sudan’s Ambassador James Pitia Morgan the ambassador for inaction and downplaying their plight.

In response, Ambassador Morgan said he is unable to evacuate the students adding that the decision is incumbent on Higher Education Ministers of both countries.

“I don’t have powers of evacuation, because I don’t have means, evacuation means money, evacuation means accommodating these students in Addis Ababa,” he said from the Ethiopian capital early on Wednesday.

“I don’t have the means of accommodating them, I don’t have means of feeding them and these are three things that we also need to consider.”

He said the Minister of Higher Education in Juba is engaging with the students and his Ethiopian counterpart on how to rescue the students on scholarship studies.

“They (education ministers) were together yesterday (Tuesday), and they reach a decision that now the student needs to be evacuated, then the student will be evacuated.”

Morgan also said the Minister of Higher Education Changson Chang, who was in Ethiopia at the time, is the one responsible for the students, and not the foreign mission.

Reuters news agency has cited residents in the Amhara region as saying Ethiopia’s military has pushed local militiamen out of two major towns, in its first major battlefield breakthroughs since fighting erupted last week.

The federal government reportedly gained control on Tuesday of the centre of Gondar, Amhara’s second-biggest city, and entered the holy town of Lalibela today after militiamen left.

Ethiopian Airlines, meanwhile, announced that flights to Gondar and Amhara’s capital, Bahir Dar – where fighting has also occurred – would resume on Thursday.