Renewed fighting in northern Ethiopia on Thursday has broken the fragile calm that followed the Pretoria Agreement, the November 2022 peace deal intended to end a devastating war between Ethiopian federal troops and fighters loyal to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF.
The immediate scale of the fighting remains unclear. Responsibility for the renewed hostilities is disputed, with both sides blaming the other. Ethiopia’s government has accused Tigrayan fighters of taking control of federally administered airports in Tigray and launching offensives in the neighbouring Afar and Amhara regions.
On Wednesday, TPLF fighters seized the airport in Mekelle from federal police. Ethiopian Airlines subsequently cancelled flights in Mekelle and elsewhere in the region, underscoring the disruption to civilian movement and services.
The fighting has already caused civilian casualties. Tigrayan authorities said a strike in the southern town of Alamata on Tuesday killed at least 14 people and injured 22 others. The US State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs condemned a drone strike on Monday that targeted a convoy of Catholic vehicles carrying food aid.
The African Union and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, known as IGAD, have called for hostilities to be de-escalated. Neither side has set out a clear path towards renewed talks.
The latest confrontation threatens to undo the agreement signed in Pretoria, South Africa, after the war waged by federal forces and the TPLF between November 2020 and November 2022. Ghent University researchers estimated that the conflict caused 500,000 civilian deaths through violence, famine and the collapse of health services.
The Pretoria Agreement called for a permanent cessation of hostilities. It also set out disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration for Tigrayan forces, political dialogue and the return of displaced people. Article 7 required the TPLF to refrain from conscripting, training, deploying or mobilising military forces, and from preparing for renewed conflict.
Nearly four years later, the disputes that drove the original war have remained unresolved. From 2024, the TPLF was increasingly consumed by an internal struggle over its direction after the war. Reports of renewed recruitment and forced mobilisation in Tigray emerged in 2026.
Political tensions have also widened. On Sunday, the TPLF and six other opposition groups announced an alliance called the Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Alliance for Survival. The coalition said it had been formed to overthrow Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s governing Prosperity Party.
The renewed military activity and the alliance announcement point to a conflict extending beyond the incomplete implementation of the Pretoria Agreement. They also leave unanswered questions over territorial control, the number of people killed in the latest fighting and the prospects for any new settlement.
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