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   Rebels in Southern Ethiopia are tying down thousands of government troops in a campaign of hit and run attacks that is
reviving the Ogaden war diplomatic sources said Friday.

The sources say 10,000 to 30,000 guerrillas of the Western Somali liberation front and Somali ABO Liberation Front are
fighting from Fedis in the North to Moyale in the South, and from Dila in the West to Werder in the East.

"Its guerrilla warfare - ambushing Ethiopians' troops and convoy's, blowing up bridges and in the North, attacking the railroad,"
said one Western diplomat. "I really believe it is important to look at it as another round in a 500-year-old conflict.The Ogaden
war didn't solve anything and the hostility that persists won't be resolved overnight."

The reports were not independently confirmed and no comment was immediately available from the Addis Ababa military
government of Lt. Col.Mengistu Haile Mariam.

U.N officials here said as well of Refugees is flooding Southern Somalia to escape the reported fighting.

The Ogaden, a semi-arid region that blossoms into pasture land once a year, is populated by Ethnic Somali Tribesmen who
view Ethiopia as a colonizing power that annexed their homeland in the 19th century.

Years of guerrilla activity exploded into war in 1977, when the rebels were joined by troops from neighboring Somalia in a
drive against Ethiopia. Backed by 17,000 Cuban troops and about a million in soviet arms Ethiopia won the war last March but guerrilla activity resumed.

"It is the destiny of our people to fight and to die and they are doing so," said Abdullahi Hassan Mahamoud, secretary general
of the Western Somali liberation front. "We know what we are doing. We know what we are fighting for and we won't give up.

Hassan, speaking through an interpeter at his pastel-colored headquarters here, said his forces roam the Ogaden countryside
freely, ambushing troops and convoys along the strategic Jijiga-Fer-Fer road that cuts across the heart of the territory.

He said Ethiopian soldiers are isolated in the region's towns and cities while the guerrillas keep in the hills and mountains when
not on raids in the flatlands.

Mohammed Adam Farrah Ali, assistant secretary-general said Ethiopian forces are advancing on foot in the rugged territory,
with supplies flown in by helicopter.

Ethiopian planes also are used in strikes against major rebel strong holds.

Sources in the Somali Abo liberation front, which fights in Ethiopia's southern bale and Sidamo provinces, claim 17,000
Ethiopian troops began a major offensive in January to drive rebels from the area.

Ethiopia also is fighting a secessionist movement in Eritrea, the northern province annexed by the late Emperor Haile Selassie in
1962, last August, Ethiopia claimed to have seized all rebel strongholds, but the rebels claimed that had moved to the
countryside.

The Associated Press (AP)
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