Residents of Mekelle were shopping for essentials last week when fighting resumed between Tigrayan rebels and Ethiopia’s federal government. By Saturday, Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) fighters were leaving the regional capital as federal forces and pro-government militias pushed them back and moved north towards the city.
The fighting followed the announcement on 20 September of the Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Alliance for Survival, a coalition of seven armed organisations that includes the TPLF, the Amhara Fano National Movement and the Oromo Liberation Army. The alliance said its aim was to remove the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.
Fighting began in northern Ethiopia on 23 September when the TPLF launched attacks into neighbouring states. Clashes have killed scores of civilians in the north in recent days, while hostilities have spread into southern Tigray and the neighbouring Afar region.
Explosions have sounded in Addis Ababa this week, with apparent drone strikes in the capital. Fighting has also moved south towards the pilgrimage site of Lalibela, while pictures of tanks in Alamata circulated as most internet connections were down.
Debretsion Gebremichael, the TPLF leader and regional president installed by the group in May 2026, said in a video message on Thursday: “We operate under a strategy to strike the enemy wherever we choose.” He also declared: “the war is regional and it is a war to control the Red Sea”.
Abiy now faces the renewed rebellion while accusing neighbouring governments of helping the armed groups. Field Marshal Birhanu Jula, Ethiopia’s army chief and commander-in-chief of the Ethiopian National Defense Force, said Eritrea, Sudan and Egypt were backing armed opposition groups. He said Eritrea was acting as a go-between between external powers and armed groups inside Ethiopia.
The accusation has been followed by a sharp diplomatic rupture. Ethiopia expelled 10 Eritrean diplomats and closed its embassy in Asmara on Thursday. Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki responded by saying his country would “sever all diplomatic ties”.
Ethiopia also expelled an Egyptian diplomat without explanation, and Cairo made a reciprocal move. Egypt denies backing the rebels. Nader Zaki, an Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said the country’s foreign policy rested on “full respect for the sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity of states, and noninterference in the internal affairs of other countries”.
Sudan’s military called Ethiopia’s accusations “baseless”. It has in turn accused Ethiopia of supporting the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which has been fighting the Sudanese Armed Forces since 2023.
Eritrea said Ethiopia was trying to place responsibility for its internal conflicts on its “neighbors”. It also accuses landlocked Ethiopia of planning to invade and take access to Eritrea’s coastline.
Against that backdrop, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is to host a four-nation summit on Sunday in Alamein, on the sidelines of an African Business Forum. It is due to bring together the presidents of Egypt, Eritrea and Somalia, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, alongside Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, chairman of Sudan’s Sovereign Council and head of the Sudanese Armed Forces.
Egypt’s presidency said the meeting was part of “consultation and coordination about regional issues of mutual concern”. The planned gathering brings together countries with disputes that extend beyond the latest fighting in Ethiopia.
Egypt and Ethiopia remain at odds over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). The wider conflict has also revived the fault lines left by Ethiopia’s previous civil war, which ran from 2020 to 2022 and killed more than 600,000 people, according to the African Union.
The Pretoria peace agreement, signed in 2022, kept an uneasy calm until last year but was never fully implemented. Its failure to settle the underlying conflict now coincides with Ethiopia’s worsening relations with Eritrea, Egypt and Sudan.
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