Armed Groups

Eritrea denies backing TPLF as Ethiopia alleges collusion, further straining their already volatile relationship.

Ethiopia has accused Eritrea of an “all-out invasion” in a message to the United Nations Security Council, while Eritrea says it is facing a “war of aggression” from its neighbour.

“The all-out invasion of parts of northern Ethiopia by Eritrea is a matter of public record,” said a letter by Ethiopia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Gedion Timothewos, which was shared with news agencies on Friday.

“It is a blatant act of aggression that engages Ethiopia’s inherent right to self-defence,” added the letter dated Thursday and addressed to French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot.

Gedion said that Eritrean troops had advanced up to 60 kilometres (37 miles) into Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region and demanded their withdrawal, just days after the two nations cut diplomatic ties.

Eritrea’s Minister of Information Yemane Gebremeskel rejected Ethiopia’s claims.

“The Ethiopian regime has been pursuing, in effect, an unprovoked war of aggression against Eritrea for more than three years now,” he said on X.

Yemane said Asmara had shown restraint since landlocked Ethiopia had essentially declared a war against Eritrea when it stated in 2023 that it would gain access to the sea.

Citing statements made by Ethiopian officials, Yemane accused Addis Ababa of using the current conflict ⁠to take Assab, an Eritrean port, in order to restore access to the Red Sea.

Eritrea also denied Ethiopia’s claim that it is backing the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which is part of an alliance of seven armed groups that has been attempting to overthrow Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government since September.

Over the past week, Ethiopia’s army has pushed back the TPLF and seized the Tigrayan capital, Mekelle.

Witnesses also told the AFP news agency that rebels had lost the Tigrayan cities of Shire and Adigrat. Eritrean troops were reportedly seen in Adigrat before Ethiopian drone strikes hit them, according to several witnesses.

Tumultuous history

Ethiopia and Eritrea have traded accusations since the reported ⁠incursions by Eritrean troops this week raised fears of outright war in the region, where the two nations have fought previous conflicts.

The stakes have been raised this time around by conflicts in the Horn of Africa region and tensions across the Red Sea.

Diplomatic ties between the two have collapsed amid the escalation: Ethiopia closed its embassy in Asmara and ordered 10 Eritrean diplomats to leave the country last week. In response, Eritrea announced it was severing ties.

The neighbours have a tumultuous history, as Eritrea won independence from Ethiopia in 1993 and they fought a border war for two years in 1998.

Relations improved slightly in 2018 when Abiy took power in Addis Ababa, and Eritrea fought alongside Ethiopia against the TPLF in a civil war from 2020 to 2022.

Eritrea, however, was not part of the peace deal that ended the war, which soured ties soon afterwards.

Tensions are also fuelled by Abiy’s repeated claim that landlocked Ethiopia – which lost its access to the coast when Eritrea secured independence – has a right to sea access, which Eritrea sees as a threat to seize its Red Sea port of Assab.

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia – After nearly two weeks of fierce fighting, Ethiopian federal forces entered the Tigrayan capital of Mekelle as forces from an alliance of rebel groups, including the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), withdrew from the city.

The fighting that erupted late last month has effectively ended the 2022 Pretoria ceasefire and the fragile peace that followed the devastating Tigray war.

But Mekelle’s capture may mark the end of conventional warfare rather than the end of the conflict. Fighting has continued elsewhere in Tigray, while reports of Eritrean troops entering northern Tigrayan towns have added a potentially more dangerous regional dimension.

Ethiopian federal forces used air power and ground forces to advance across Tigray. After suffering successive defeats around the towns of Alamata and Kobo, rebel forces withdrew into the surrounding countryside. They have pledged to continue fighting.

“We will confront the enemy on our terms and where we choose,” TPLF leader Debretsion Gebremichael said.

A war that may not be over

There are echoes of the war that began in 2020, when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government declared victory after federal forces captured Mekelle. Tigrayan forces subsequently regrouped in the mountains, retook much of the region and recaptured the capital, prolonging the war for nearly a year and a half.

The renewed conflict could follow a similar trajectory, particularly if the TPLF and other armed groups succeed in turning the mountainous terrain into a prolonged armed rebellion. Ethiopia is already fighting insurgencies in Amhara and Oromia, raising the prospect of its federal forces being stretched across multiple fronts.

But the battlefield reversals suffered by the rebels could have implications well beyond Tigray. They have raised concern in Egypt and among other Ethiopian rivals, according to Hossamaldeen Ibrahim, an African analyst at the Bloomsbury Intelligence and Security Institute.

“Egypt views the Renaissance Dam, and any Ethiopian [army] move towards the Red Sea, as a strategic threat, so it has allied with Eritrea, Sudan and Somalia against any Ethiopian unilateralism,” Ibrahim told Al Jazeera.

“Ethiopia is seeking a sea outlet; Eritrea sees this as an existential threat.”

Ethiopia’s Red Sea ambitions

Ethiopia has been landlocked since Eritrea won its war of independence in 1991, leaving Addis Ababa heavily dependent on neighbouring countries for access to international trade.

Abiy has increasingly made access to the Red Sea a strategic priority since 2023, raising concerns in Eritrea over Ethiopia’s ambitions, particularly over the port of Assab.

Ethiopia currently relies heavily on Djibouti for maritime trade, while also pursuing alternative arrangements, including through Kenya and Somaliland.

After being sworn in on Monday for another five-year term following his party’s victory in the June 1 election, Abiy again put the issue at the centre of his parliamentary address.

“Based on the principle of give and take, we will work diligently to ensure that Ethiopia has an outlet to the sea,” he told parliament.

The issue has increasingly become part of a wider regional contest.

A loose regional alignment

In recent months, Egypt, Eritrea, Sudan and Somalia have found themselves sharing concerns over Ethiopia’s regional ambitions. On October 4, the leaders of the four countries met for a quadrilateral consultative summit in New Alamein, Egypt, where they discussed regional issues and pledged to strengthen political, economic and trade cooperation as well as consultation and coordination.

The meeting does not amount to a formal military alliance, and the four countries have different interests in their dealings with Addis Ababa. The summit’s joint declaration also called for respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, noninterference in internal affairs and the peaceful resolution of disputes.

But their concerns increasingly overlap around Ethiopia’s ambitions in the Red Sea, the Nile and the wider Horn of Africa.

Relations between Ethiopia and Eritrea have also deteriorated sharply since the Pretoria ceasefire. Ethiopia closed its embassy in Eritrea and expelled Eritrean diplomats on October 1, accusing Asmara of hostile acts and involvement in the renewed fighting. Eritrea responded by severing diplomatic ties, while denying that it supported the opposition alliance. Egypt and Sudan have also denied Ethiopian accusations that they are backing the alliance.

The Ethiopian army’s advance into Tigray has added another layer to that rivalry.

“The [Ethiopian army’s] advance in Tigray directly threatens [Eritrean President] Isaias [Afwerki] and the Eritrean state,” said Etana H Dinka, an assistant professor of African history at the University of Miami.

Eritrean forces fought alongside Ethiopian troops during the 2020–22 Tigray war, but relations between Abiy and Isaias have since deteriorated. Eritrean troops have reportedly been seen in towns in northern Tigray, adding a potentially significant new dimension to the conflict. The Associated Press news agency reported Eritrean troops entering Adigrat and Idaga Hamus after crossing into Ethiopia, while Eritrea has neither confirmed nor denied the troop movements.

Eritrea’s role could be decisive

For Eritrea, the location of the fighting matters as much as its outcome.

A prolonged conflict in Tigray could keep Ethiopian forces tied down and limit Addis Ababa’s ability to pursue its Red Sea ambitions. But a decisive Ethiopian victory could leave the federal government with greater freedom to turn its attention towards regional rivals.

“With reports that Eritrean troops are moving into Tigray, Eritrea seems keen on boosting TPLF forces withdrawing northwards, so that the engagement between Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers takes place in Tigrayan territory, and not in Eritrea,” said Mohamed Kheir Omer, a researcher focused on the Horn of Africa.

That could create an incentive for Eritrea to support forces capable of keeping the Ethiopian army tied down, without necessarily entering a direct confrontation of its own.

Sudan adds another layer

Sudan’s war adds another dimension to the regional rivalry.

Egypt has provided political backing and logistical and technical support to Sudan’s army, according to the Reuters news agency, while the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been accused of atrocities in Darfur.

Ethiopia has faced accusations of facilitating support for the RSF. A Reuters investigation reported in February that Ethiopia was hosting a camp in its western Benishangul-Gumuz region where thousands of fighters linked to the RSF were being trained. Reuters cited eight sources, including a senior Ethiopian government official, who said the United Arab Emirates financed the camp’s construction and provided military trainers and logistical support. The UAE denied the allegations, and Reuters said it could not independently verify the UAE’s role.

Those competing relationships are part of a broader contest over the Nile, Sudan, the Red Sea and access to trade routes.

For Egypt, its dispute with Ethiopia over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam remains a major strategic concern. For Eritrea, Ethiopia’s search for a Red Sea outlet is viewed through the lens of national security. For Sudan’s neighbours, the conflict threatens to reshape regional power balances.

Will Egypt, Eritrea, Sudan and Somalia intervene?

The shared interests of Ethiopia’s regional rivals do not necessarily translate into direct intervention.

Egypt has its own calculations over the Nile and Sudan. Eritrea has a direct security interest in developments in Tigray. Somalia is dealing with its own security challenges and a complicated relationship with Addis Ababa. Sudan remains consumed by its devastating civil war.

At the same time, Ethiopia’s federal forces now face the possibility of fighting on several fronts.

The TPLF, Amhara Fano and the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) have each sought to challenge the federal government in different parts of the country. If they can maintain pressure on the army while retreating from major population centres, the fall of Mekelle could prove to be only the first phase of a much longer conflict.

For Ethiopia’s rivals, the question is whether to exploit that vulnerability or avoid being drawn into another regional war.

The extent of any regional involvement may ultimately depend on whether the TPLF can keep federal forces tied down in Tigray, and away from the Eritrean border.

“It isn’t difficult to understand Cairo’s commitment to prevent Ethiopia from succeeding in the current warfare, whatever its army’s intended goals, including Abiy’s acclaimed access to the Red Sea, are,” University of Miami’s Dinka said.

The question now is whether those regional calculations will remain largely diplomatic or spill into the battlefield.

Tigray People’s Liberation Front says in a ‘situation of full-blown war’ with Ethiopia’s government.

Ethiopia’s army says it has killed at least 272 fighters from the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) in a counter-offensive in the country’s northwest Amhara region.

The Ethiopian National Defence Force said on Thursday that another 260 Tigrayan fighters were wounded and several were captured.

“Government forces launched a counter-offensive that inflicted heavy personnel and equipment losses on the TPLF” after the group and its allies attacked several areas of North Wollo, a region of Amhara that borders Tigray, the army said in a statement on Facebook.

The intensification came days after TPLF and six other armed groups from across Ethiopia announced the formation of the Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Alliance for Survival, which committed itself to removing Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government.

The coalition brought together the newly-formed Amhara Fano National Movement, the Oromo Liberation Army and other movements from the Somali, Afar and Benishangul-Gumuz regional states.

‘Full-blown war’

“We are in the situation of full-blown war now,” TPLF Vice President Amanuel Assefa told AFP news agency on Thursday.

He confirmed that Tigrayan forces were fighting alongside local armed groups in Afar and Amhara.

The alliance marks a striking realignment that had been almost a year in the making, bringing together armed groups with very different histories and grievances against the central government, including forces with histories of conflict among themselves.

In a statement issued as the fighting widened on Wednesday, the alliance said the federal government was attacking its forces on several fronts and presented their response as part of the broader struggle that had brought the coalition together.

Meanwhile, the escalation has disrupted air travel, as Tigrayan forces seized three local airports in the region.

Flights to Lalibela, a UNESCO-listed site in Amhara known for its medieval rock-hewn churches, were suspended on Thursday, according to Reuters news agency.

AFP also received reports of fighting around Lalibela, causing its airport to close. The area has often been targeted by the Fano, a local armed group that is now operating alongside the TPLF.

Wider regional rivalries

TPLF last went ⁠to war with the Ethiopian federal government in 2020, leading to a devastating two-year conflict that ended with a peace deal in 2022.

In his address at the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, Ethiopia’s President Taye Atske-Selassie Amde blamed the escalation on “the forces of destruction and mayhem” and “interference in our internal affairs by adversarial elements”.

He said Ethiopia had exercised “immense restraint” and made progress with its neighbours.

Analysts say the Tigray rebels have support from Eritrea, which fears landlocked Ethiopia is planning to invade its territory to gain access to the Red Sea.

The TPLF’s Assefa told AFP “we have no information about Eritrea’s plan”. Asked if they would request Eritrean intervention, he said: “Not yet.”

Ethiopia’s domestic conflicts are becoming harder to separate from wider rivalries in the Horn of Africa, particularly Addis Ababa’s deteriorating relationship with Eritrea and Sudan’s civil war.

Sudan’s army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan has visited Asmara twice since July for talks with Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki, while Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, reportedly visited Addis Ababa in late August.

“They’ve begun an offensive around southern Tigray,” Abdisalam Balema, a member of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front’s (TPLF) central committee, told Al Jazeera by phone from Mekelle, the Tigrayan capital, on Wednesday morning.

“They’re carrying out strikes in many places. We are not sure of the extent of it or whether they will continue, but we will assess it.”

Balema did not know it then, but he was describing the start of a major military escalation.

Fighting intensified across parts of Tigray and later spread to the neighbouring Afar and Amhara regions, pitting federal forces against several armed groups. A day later, Balema told Al Jazeera that the situation had become a “full war”.

The Tigray Army said the federal government had launched a “full-scale offensive” involving infantry, mechanised units and drones, and said its forces had begun counteroffensive operations.

Getachew Reda, a former senior TPLF figure who now advises Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, gave the opposite account of how the fighting began, accusing the TPLF of launching the attack.

The escalation disrupted air travel, as Tigrayan forces seized airports in the region and Ethiopian Airlines suspended flights across Tigray. Local reports also said they had captured Abala, a district capital in neighbouring Afar.

Amid the competing accounts of how the escalation began, the immediate question may now be whether Ethiopia has crossed into a wider conflict.

The intensification came days after seven armed movements from across Ethiopia, including the TPLF, announced the formation of the Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Alliance for Survival, which committed itself to removing Abiy’s government.

The coalition has brought together the Amhara Fano National Movement and the Oromo Liberation Army, alongside other movements from Somali, Afar and Benishangul-Gumuz areas.

The alliance marked a striking realignment that had been almost a year in the making, bringing together movements with very different histories and grievances against the central government, including forces with bitter histories of conflict among themselves.

In a statement issued as the fighting widened on Wednesday, the alliance said the federal government was attacking its member forces on several fronts and presented their response as part of the broader struggle that had brought the coalition together.

The regional East African bloc IGAD called for hostilities to cease and direct dialogue to resume, while the United Nations has expressed concern over the formation of the new armed coalition and reports of drone attacks.

About three-quarters of a million people were already internally displaced in Tigray because of the earlier war, according to UN migration data.

Formation of the alliance

The alliance grew out of the political realignment that followed the Pretoria agreement, which ended the two-year Tigray war in November 2022. The deal brought peace between Addis Ababa and the TPLF, but fractured the coalition Abiy had assembled to fight the war.

Neither Eritrea nor Amhara forces, whose troops had fought alongside the federal army, were parties to the final agreement, and both later fell out with the federal government.

In Amhara, tensions over plans to dismantle regional forces helped trigger open conflict between the Ethiopian government and Fano fighters, organised under the Amhara Fano National Movement, in 2023. Relations with Eritrea also deteriorated, first over the Pretoria settlement and later over Abiy’s push for access to the Red Sea through Eritrean ports.

The Pretoria agreement also deepened divisions within the TPLF, between figures such as Reda, who continued to defend the settlement, and a faction led by Debretsion Gebremichael that increasingly rejected the political order it had created.

Pretoria “changed the equation”, Faisal Roble, a regional analyst and member of the East African Parliament, told Al Jazeera. “Abiy alienated all of them at different levels.”

The faction led by Debretsion later seized power in Tigray and repaired relations with former enemies, including Fano fighters in Amhara and Eritrea, upending the alliances that had defined the previous war.

The government’s spokeswoman, Billene Seyoum, told the Reuters news agency after the new coalition was announced that its members had already been collaborating with financial backing from Asmara and that the formal declaration confirmed statements by government officials.

Eritrea has repeatedly denied supporting Ethiopian armed groups.

Reda had dismissed the alliance’s chances of ousting the government shortly after it was announced. “I don’t lose sleep over that,” he told state media this week.

“Now it [the TPLF] goes back to the drawing board, and declares Pretoria dead and starts an alliance with the very people who fell out with the federal government because Pretoria was signed,” he added.

Balema, the senior TPLF official, said the party’s decision to join those former enemies reflected its determination not to find itself isolated if the conflict widened again.

“We’ve been forced to ally with other movements who also face an existential threat from the government,” he told Al Jazeera. “We don’t want a repeat of 2020 when we were encircled and alone.”

Balema acknowledged unresolved disputes within the alliance, including competing claims over western Tigray involving Amhara forces, but said the groups had agreed to address them through dialogue.

“We have a political charter, and our aim is to remove the personalist regime of Abiy Ahmed, establish a transitional government, hold a constitutional dialogue and move to elections,” he added, saying “the alliance is in consensus on this.”

“For now it seems like it will work, but when the deeper issues need to be resolved it will test their different constituencies, who have different expectations,” Mohamed Kheir Omer, a researcher focused on the Horn of Africa, told Al Jazeera.

“But right now it isn’t the urgent issue.”

Beyond northern Ethiopia

The alliance also draws in the Oromo Liberation Army and a faction of the Ogaden National Liberation Front, movements rooted in older demands for autonomy and self-determination among Ethiopia’s Oromo and Somali populations.

Both had fought the TPLF-dominated government that preceded Abiy and are now allied with the TPLF. Taking office in 2018, promising a break with the old order, Abiy sought to bring both into civilian politics.

The Oromo Liberation Front returned from exile, but disagreements over disarmament left part of its armed wing outside the settlement.

Those fighters continued their armed conflict as the Oromo Liberation Army, and subsequent peace talks with the government failed.

Though the OLA ultimately signed the new alliance agreement, its leader, Jaal Marroo, had described it in the preceding days as a “procedural consensus” rather than a substantive settlement on Ethiopia’s political future.

The ONLF stayed out of armed conflict after its own 2018 peace deal, but later fractured. An overseas faction accuses the government of failing to implement the agreement and eroding Somali autonomy, while the leadership inside Ethiopia’s Somali region denies joining the new alliance.

Abdulkadir Hassan Hirmoge, a spokesperson for the faction that joined, told Al Jazeera that it now regards the 2018 agreement as void.

He said joining the alliance did not mean restarting an armed struggle, but backing its programme of removing Abiy and establishing a transitional government.

Regional dimension

Ethiopia’s domestic conflicts are becoming harder to separate from wider rivalries in the Horn, particularly Sudan’s civil war and Addis Ababa’s deteriorating relationship with Eritrea.

Sudan’s army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan has visited Asmara twice since July for talks with Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki, while Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, the commander of Sudan’s rival Rapid Support Forces, reportedly visited Addis Ababa in late August.

Reuters reported in February that thousands of RSF fighters were being trained at a camp in western Ethiopia, while Sudan has accused Ethiopia, and its ally the United Arab Emirates, which also reportedly backs the RSF, of allowing drones to be launched from its territory into Sudan.

The emerging Ethiopian opposition alignment has touched the same regional network.

Several figures associated with groups now in the alliance attended a meeting in Port Sudan in May, publicly presented as a “people-to-people” initiative.

In July, Abiy told lawmakers: “Let alone Eritrea, the TPLF and Sudan, even if others were added, we do not have an iota of fear regarding Ethiopia’s sovereignty.”

Balema, the senior TPLF official, denied that the alliance was receiving military or logistical support from either Eritrea or Sudan, saying its relationships abroad amounted to political contacts rather than foreign backing.

“We didn’t create the current problem with Eritrea; Abiy did with his demands on its ports, and the same with Somalia,” he said.

“In Sudan, he is now supporting the Rapid Support Forces. He has created his own enemies across the region and we are just picking up the pieces.”

Sudan has recently sought to ease tensions with Addis Ababa. Malik Agar, the second in command of its military-aligned government, said last week that “we do not want to get involved in a war with Ethiopia.”

Jawar Mohammed, an Oromo opposition politician, warned that Ethiopia could nevertheless become an “incongruent battlefield” in which wider regional contests increasingly play out.

“These things are impossible to control,” he said.