In Eritrea, an isolated African nation with an iron-fisted ruler, dissident soldiers with tanks laid siege to the information ministry on Monday and forced state media to call for the release of political prisoners, a senior intelligence official said.

The renegade soldiers have not gone as far as to demand the overthrow of the government of Isaias Afewerki, 66, who oversees one of the continent's most secretive states, long at odds with the United States and accused of human rights abuses.

Isaias has been in control for some two decades since Eritrea broke from bigger neighbor Ethiopia. Under his leadership, The fledgling gold producer on the Red Sea coast has become increasingly isolated, resisting foreign pressure to open up.

Between 5,000 and 10,000 political prisoners are being held in the country of about 6 million people, the United Nations human rights chief said last year, accusing Eritrea of torture and summary executions.

Soldiers forced the director general of state television "to say the Eritrean government should release all political prisoners,'' the Eritrean intelligence source told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

There was no immediate statement from the Asmara government.

State media went off air after the call for prisoners to be freed. The mutineers were low- to mid-ranking soldiers who sought a change in the constitution rather than a coup, said one regional expert with close connections in Asmara.

About 200 soldiers were involved, diplomats in the region said. It was unclear whether loyalist troops were moving against them.

On a strategic strip of mountainous land, Eritrea is a tightly controlled one-party state. It has more soldiers per person than any country except North Korea.

Eritrean opposition activists exiled in neighboring Ethiopia said there was growing dissent within the army, Africa's second biggest, especially over economic hardship.

"Economic issues have worsened and have worsened relations between the government and soldiers in the past few weeks and months,'' one activist told Reuters.

Despite expectations for a gold mining boom that helped fuel economic growth of nearly 8 percent last year, per capita gross domestic product is less than $550 a year.

A senior European diplomat said there were clear differences between elements of the military and Isaias' administration.

"It is a question of time before the full price of isolation is paid by the government in Asmara. Incidents such as this are mounting,'' the diplomat said, referring also to economic hardship for most Eritreans.

Eritrea split from Ethiopia in 1991 and relations between them are perennially strained.

Isaias' government in Asmara has also accused the United States, a staunch ally of Ethiopia, of trying to topple Isaias. A U.S. diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks described him in 2009 as an "unhinged dictator." He survived an assassination attempt by a disgruntled soldier the same year, diplomatic sources said.

Isaias has also accused the United States of spreading lies that he is sick. He has no obvious successor.

The United Nations' Security Council imposed an embargo on Eritrea in 2009 over concerns its government was funding and arming al Shabaab rebels in neighbouring Somalia — charges Asmara denied.

REUTERS

Cris Bouroncle / AFP - Getty Images, file

A file picture taken in 2009 shows Meles Zenawi at the 9th Summit of the African Peer Review Forum (APRF) in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

Updated at 5:54 a.m. ET: Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, a senior Africa figurehead, died of an infection while being treated abroad for an undisclosed illness, state-run television said on Tuesday.

Speculation that Meles, 57, was seriously ill grew after he failed to attend an African Union summit in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa last month.

"Prime Minister Zenawi suddenly passed away last night. Meles was recovering in a hospital overseas for the past two months but died of a sudden infection at 11:40 (on Monday night, or 4:40 p.m. ET)," state television said.

Hailemariam Dessalegne, the deputy prime minister, was expected to be sworn in early Tuesday, according to the Twitter account of the Addis Fortune newspaper in Addis Ababa.

Meles, who led the Horn of Africa country for more than two decades, was born into a middle-class family but dropped out of university to join an armed insurrection led by the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), according to a BBC obituary.

Meles seized power in 1991 from Mengistu Haile Mariam's military junta. As president and then prime minister he turned Ethiopia into a key player in regional security affairs.

His forces, widely regarded as among the strongest on the continent, have entered Somalia twice to battle Islamist militants, winning him accolades from the West for supporting its fight against al-Qaida-linked groups.

Unspecified condition
Ethiopia's government said last month that Meles was taking a break to recover from an unspecified condition. Diplomats in Addis Ababa had said Meles was being treated in Brussels for an undisclosed illness, while others said he was in Germany.

Somali Islamist militants hailed Meles' death as a "historic day" and said Ethiopia, which has troops inside Somalia, would now crumble. 

"We are very glad about Meles' death. Ethiopia is sure to collapse," Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage, the spokesman for Al Shabaab told Reuters. Meles twice rolled his troops across the border to help crush Islamist insurgencies. 

Kenya's Prime Minister Raila Odinga told the BBC he feared for the stability of Ethiopia following Meles' death, citing the continued threat of ethnic violence.

In an Aug. 16 post on the Think Africa Press blog, entitled Ethiopia: What Might a Post-Meles Era Bring?, Yohannes Woldemariam wrote: "The stability of Ethiopia's regime is anchored on the strength of its military, support from the U.S., and the individual intelligence and charisma of Meles."

During his time in office Meles was credited with steering Ethiopia towards economic growth and also helped mediate in several regional disputes, including rifts between Sudan and South Sudan.

"I believe that any successor to Meles will focus first on domestic issues and for the most part leave the regional and international engagement to other countries, at least until the new leader is firmly established in office," David Shinn, former U.S. Ambassador to Ethiopia, told Reuters recently.

"For internal security reasons, there will be a continuing focus on Somalia and I do not foresee any significant change towards Eritrea," he said, referring to Ethiopia's arch-foe with whom it fought a decade-long border war.

But Ethiopia would be less willing to devote a lot of time and resources to problems further afield, Shinn said.

However, international rights groups say Meles was intolerant of dissent. Several opposition figures and journalists have been arrested under a 2009 anti-terrorism law.

State television said details of his funeral would be announced soon, the Horn of Africa country's first state burial in modern times.

Emperor Haile Selassie was laid to rest in 2000, 26 years after he was deposed. His body was found decades later beneath a palace lavatory in what forensic experts said were signs he had been murdered.

Another deposed leader, Mengistu Haile Mariam lives in exile in Zimbabwe.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia – Ahead of this week's G8 summit at Camp David, Maryland, the musician and global poverty campaigner Bob Geldof has returned to Ethiopia to highlight the issue of famine and climate change – 28 years after his charity appeals first made world headlines.

The singer said G8 leaders have failed to adhere to aid targets set at the Gleneagles summit in 2005.

The G8 "is capable of contributing to end" poverty, he said.

He also acknowledged that people may have grown tired of his campaigning, but said even basic projects such as the irrigation ditch he was inspecting, saved lives. "I know people are like...'Oh, Geldof, give it a break' but the facts is these people [here] are not dead."

Geldof was one of the key figures behind the Band Aid fundraising music project, launched in 1984 after Ethiopia suffered a devastating famine.

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ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia -- Ethiopia attacked rebel bases inside neighboring Eritrea on Thursday, accusing its arch-foe of training fighters who have staged raids, including a January attack that killed five Western tourists.

It was the first attack by Ethiopian troops inside Eritrea since the end of a 1998-2000 war that killed 70,000 people and still festers, because the frontier dispute that ignited the conflict remains unresolved.

Ethiopia routinely accuses Asmara of supporting Ethiopian separatist groups. It blamed an Afar rebel movement for the kidnapping of Westerners in its northern Afar region in 2007, and again for the attack in the same area in January.

"Our national defense force has today taken measures against military posts inside Eritrea in which subversive and anti-peace elements were trained," government spokesman Shimeles Kemal told reporters.

Five Europeans killed in attack in remote Ethiopia

Gunmen killed two Germans, two Hungarians and an Austrian in a dawn attack on a group of tourists in the remote Afar region on January 17, and seized two Germans and two Ethiopians.

A rebel group in the Afar region said last week it had freed the two Germans, although there has been no official confirmation of the release.

"These groups are operating in the Afar area. We know for certain that the Eritrean government harbors, supports, trains and deploys subversive groups that occasionally launch attacks on civilian and infrastructure targets inside Ethiopia," he said.

Shimeles said Ethiopian soldiers attacked three places -- Ramid, Gelahbe and Gimbi -- 10 miles inside southeastern Eritrea. "We will continue our measures as long as they remain a launching pad for similar attacks," he said.

Border dispute still unresolved
After the border war, The Hague-based Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission ruled in 2002 that the border village of Badme belonged to Eritrea.

However, the village remains in Ethiopia and Eritrea blames the international community, and the United Nations in particular, for not forcing Ethiopia to accept the border.

Tensions along the frontier rose sharply in November 2005 as both countries moved up troops. By January 2006, Ethiopia had complied with a U.N. demand to withdraw its soldiers.

The United Nations has also slapped sanctions on Eritrea, accusing it of supporting Islamist rebels in Somalia, a charge the Red Sea state strongly denies.

Despite the repeated denials that it is not a destabilizing force in the volatile Horn of Africa region, Eritrea is widely regarded in the international community as a pariah state and is deeply mistrusted by its neighbors.

Eritrea accuses Ethiopia -- Washington's main ally in the Horn of Africa -- and the United States of influencing a U.N. monitoring group with fabricated evidence about the reclusive Red Sea state's links to militants in Somalia.

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The Ethiopian government is forcing tens of thousands of people off their land so it can be leased to foreign investors,  Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report released Tuesday.

The Horn of Africa state has already leased 3 million hectares (7.4 million acres)  to foreign farm businesses and the U.S.-based rights group said that the government had plans to lease another 2.1 million hectares (5.2 million acres), Reuters reported.

Courtesy Human Rights Watch

The new village of Bildak in Ethiopia's Gambella region, which the semi-nomadic
Nuer who were forcibly transferred there quickly abandoned in May 2011 because
there was no water source for their cattle, according to Human Rights Watch.

HRW said that 1.5 million Ethiopians would eventually be forced from their land and highlighted what it said was the latest case of forced relocation in its report "Ethiopia: Forced Relocations Bring Hunger, Hardship."

"My father was beaten for refusing to go along [to the new village] with some other elders," HRW quoted a former villager as saying.  "He said, 'I was born here -- my children were born here -- I am too old to move so I will stay.'  He was beaten by the army with sticks and the butt of a gun. He had to be taken to hospital. He died because of the beating -- he just became weaker and weaker."

The United Nations has increasingly voiced concern that countries such as China and Gulf Arab states are buying swathes of land in Africa and Asia to secure their own food supplies, often at the expense of local people.

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"The Ethiopian government under its "villagization" program is forcibly relocating approximately 70,000 indigenous people from the western Gambella region to new villages that lack adequate food, farmland, health care, and educational facilities," HRW said, adding it had interviewed more than 100 people for the report.

"The first round of forced relocations occurred at the worst possible time of year -- the beginning of the harvest. Government failure to provide food assistance for relocated people has caused endemic hunger and cases of starvation," it said.

Government denial
Government officials deny the charge and say the affected plots of land are largely uninhabited and under-used, while it has also launched a program to settle tens of thousands from the remote province in more fertile areas of the country.

"Human Rights Watch has wrongly alleged the villagization program to be unpopular and problematic," government spokesman Bereket Simon told Reuters.

"There is no evidence to back the claim. This program is taking place with the full preparation and participation of regional authorities, the government and residents," he said.

Ethiopia says its prime intention in leasing large chunks of land is technology transfer and to boost production in a country that has been ravaged by droughts over the past few decades.

Reuters and msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.

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