Fears that northern Ethiopia could slide back into full-scale war intensified this week after Tigrayan forces seized control of three regional airports and both sides accused each other of launching new offensives, more than three years after the last conflict left an estimated 600,000 people dead.
Getachew Reda, an adviser to Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and a former Tigray interim administrator who broke with the TPLF in 2025, said Tigrayan fighters had taken federally administered airports and pushed into the neighbouring Afar and Amhara regions. The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) said its forces had instead entered a “defensive war” following reported drone strikes. Reports from Mekelle indicated Alula Aba Nega International Airport was taken from federal police overnight, with Shire and reportedly Axum airports following. Ethiopian Airlines has suspended all flights to the three destinations.
This week’s confrontation did not emerge without warning. Tensions have built steadily since February, when the TPLF first told an African Union panel overseeing the 2022 Pretoria peace agreement that federally aligned forces remained on Tigrayan territory and displaced residents had not returned home. By April, the TPLF had gone further, reviving its pre-war regional council and calling the federal government’s extension of the interim administration a unilateral violation of the deal.
In June, the European Union publicly raised alarm over reports of TPLF military conscription and a parallel administrative structure, warning both moves risked unravelling gains made since the 2022 ceasefire. Through August, drone strikes on Mekelle became a near-weekly occurrence; one strike on a residential neighbourhood injured 13 people, including five children, according to Ayder Referral Hospital. Regional analyst Kjetil Tronvoll said at the time the strikes suggested Addis Ababa was prepared to use “harsher means” against the TPLF rather than a shift toward indiscriminate targeting.
The immediate trigger for this week’s escalation was the formation of a new alliance. On Sunday, the TPLF announced it had joined six other armed groups in a political and military coalition aimed at removing Abiy’s government. Ethiopia’s federal government has accused the alliance of receiving backing from Eritrea, a claim Asmara has previously denied. US Ambassador to Ethiopia Ervin Massinga warned the TPLF against the offensive directly, calling it an “unwinnable fight” and saying Washington retains the option of sanctioning leaders who push the country back toward conflict.
Speaking at the UN General Assembly in New York, Ethiopian President Taye Astike Selassie said the country had shown “immense restraint” despite what he called interference by “adversarial elements” he did not name, warning “forces of destruction and mayhem” to respect the region’s right to peace. African Union Commission chairperson Mahmoud Ali Youssouf has called for immediate de-escalation and a return to talks — an appeal that echoes years of AU mediation, led by former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, that produced the original 2022 agreement but has struggled to secure its full implementation ever since.
On Tuesday, a strike on the southern town of Alamata killed at least 14 people and injured 22 others, according to Tigrayan authorities; the town’s mayor told the BBC the dead and injured were all civilians and accused federal forces of targeting two schools he said were unoccupied and not in use as bases. The federal government has not commented on the allegation, and the claims have not been independently verified. Separately, the US State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs condemned a reported drone strike on a convoy of Catholic vehicles carrying food aid, calling for an investigation.
Around a million people displaced by the earlier war remain unable to return home, and the region’s economy is still recovering from the loss of federal subsidies. Whether the current airport seizures and troop movements harden into a full return to war, or force renewed negotiations, is likely to depend heavily on whether the African Union mediation that produced the fragile 2022 peace can still command enough authority to pull both sides back from it — the same authority that has been eroding, in slower and less visible increments, for most of this year. Afrikeye has previously examined Eritrea’s own armed-struggle legacy and its continuing influence over conflicts in the Horn of Africa.
