Thousands of people in Tigray have fled into neighbouring Sudan as a result of the fightingImage caption: Thousands of people in Tigray have fled into neighbouring Sudan as a result of the fighting Nigeria’s former President Olusegun Obasanjo is travelling to Ethiopia to try and start negotiations between Ethiopia’s federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the AFP news agency reports.

This news comes just hours after Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni proposed talks and then deleted the tweet that mentioned it.

Ethiopia’s government has been very firm that it is not interested in talking to the TPLF. It argues that the party, which is in power in Tigray, has resisted a peaceful resolution of the differences with the federal government over the past two years.

"Any mediation effort will incentivise impunity and unruliness," Ethiopia's state minister of foreign affairs Redwan Hussein has told journalists in Addis Ababa.

"Any country would not sit down with part of the country that boldly claims to have rockets and missiles and vows to attack."

Ex-President Obasanjo is “on his way to Addis Ababa for talks”, his spokesman Kehinde Akinyemi is quoted by the AFP news agency as saying.

"He is going there for mediation," he added, but did not give any more details.

Ethiopians who fled the ongoing fighting in Tigray region gather in Hamdait village on the Sudan-Ethiopia border.