Those words land against a different map for Amhara readers. Fighting has already spread from Tigray into neighboring Afar and Amhara after seven armed groups announced the Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Alliance for Survival, a coalition committed to removing Abiy Ahmed’s government. Al Jazeera said the latest Afar battles have been around Abala, where the military has been trying to keep rebels from seizing the town. In North Wollo, the same Al Jazeera report recalled the army’s Thursday claim that it had killed 272 Tigrayan fighters and wounded 260 in a counter-offensive. Abdisalam Balema, a TPLF central committee member, told Al Jazeera the situation had become a “full war,” and the TPLF’s Tigray Army said the federal government had launched a “full-scale offensive” with infantry, mechanised units, and drones. Fighting has also continued around Sama, Soqota, and Raya Alamata, with government forces reportedly closing in on Alamata.
While Addis Ababa talks about restraint on the Tigray axis, the Amhara Association of America published an urgent September 26 update on Amhara prisoners of conscience held inside the capital’s prison system. AAA said it had learned that more than twenty-nine high-profile Amhara prisoners of conscience are facing life-threatening conditions amid heightened health and safety concerns while in what the group calls illegal detention. According to information received by AAA, seven of those twenty-nine detainees were transported to undisclosed locations since the evening of September 25. Among the seven, AAA named Dr. Wondwossen Assefa, who was transferred from Kaliti Prison to Kilinto Prison as of September 26. AAA said Dr. Assefa had earlier been placed in a cramped area known as “Zone 6,” used for military personnel implicated in serious criminal cases, and that his health has deteriorated amid preexisting chronic pain. The group said the transfer was conducted under “orders from above” attributed to an official identified as Commissioner Teklu, last name unknown. Advocacy groups cited in the update called for independent verification of his condition, immediate access to adequate medical care and humane detention conditions, contact with family and legal representatives, and clarification of the legal basis for the transfer.
AAA is a U.S.-based advocacy NGO that documents Amhara-side harm, so its framing and its reading of state institutions should be treated carefully and attributed as advocacy reporting rather than as a court judgment. Mereja is not repeating AAA’s partisan labels for Abiy Ahmed’s Prosperity Party. Even with that caveat, the September 26 ledger puts named Amhara detainees, Kaliti and Kilinto transfers, and health deterioration into the same news week as Berhanu Jula’s language about wisdom and strategic calm. For families of those prisoners, the army’s vocabulary about restraint on one front does not answer questions about who holds the keys in Addis Ababa’s detention system, or why seven high-profile Amhara prisoners were moved since September 25 without a clear public legal explanation from Abiy Ahmed’s regime.
On the Amhara battlefield itself, contested Fano claims also undercut any picture of a quiet hinterland. In a September 26 Al Jazeera newsfeed video, armed fighters from Ethiopia’s Fano movement claim to have seized more than ten military trucks carrying ammunition, machine guns, and mortar shells in the Amhara region. Al Jazeera noted that fighting has intensified following the formation of the new alliance of armed groups seeking to overthrow Abiy Ahmed’s government. Those capture figures remain Fano claims until corroborated by independent reporters or official acknowledgment. Contested kill and capture tallies have been a constant feature of Abiy Ahmed’s Amhara war, and readers should keep that verification gap on the page.
Zegabi’s English reporting has kept Amhara geography in view while the Tigray return to open fighting dominates many English desks. A September 16 Zegabi piece on AAA’s September 7 to 13 weekly update logged battle events and rights-violation claims across eight Amhara zones: North Wollo, South Wollo, North Shewa, East Gojjam, West Gojjam, Awi, North Gojjam, and Central Gonder, with additional developments in North Shewa Zone of Oromia Region. That geography undercuts the federal government’s long-running pitch that operations in Amhara are a contained security cleanup. An earlier September 11 Zegabi report carried a pro-Fano claim, via Shabelle Media Network, that Fano fighters took more than 150 Ethiopian National Defence Force soldiers prisoner in the Wadla-Delanta-Dawunt area of North Wollo on September 8, while noting that the claim could not be independently verified and that there was no immediate ENDF confirmation. Zegabi Media’s English channel on X, @zegabimedia, has also been a named Amhara and Fano primary and claim source that readers follow alongside zegabi.com when official communiques leave civilian geography thin.
The Alliance for Survival did not end the Amhara and Afar fighting. Al Jazeera’s September 27 reporting places continued battles around Abala in Afar and along North Wollo approaches after the coalition announcement. Internet access was reportedly cut across northern Ethiopia on Friday, a day after the United Nations said it was alarmed by reports of drones being used against civilians. Alemayehu Weldemariam, a professor of law at Indiana University, told Al Jazeera that the federal government bears much of the blame for the collapse of the Pretoria Agreement, citing fuel, service, and cash restrictions on Tigray and the failure to build the interim administration the deal had promised. “This war has been in the making for a while now,” he said. That institutional critique sits beside, rather than replaces, the Amhara detention and multi-zone war ledger that AAA and Zegabi have kept in English.
Verification limits matter. AAA’s prisoner update rests on information the group says it received and on advocacy calls for independent medical access; it is not a hospital chart the public can audit from outside Kaliti and Kilinto. The Fano truck-seizure claim in Al Jazeera’s September 26 video is attributed to fighters on camera, not to a verified inventory of captured ENDF stocks. The army’s “wisdom and restraint” and “strategic calm” lines are official messaging from Field Marshal Berhanu Jula, not an independent measure of how Abiy Ahmed’s forces are conducting the wider northern war. Zegabi’s eight-zone AAA ledger and North Wollo prisoner claim are useful geography and attribution, but many battlefield casualty and capture figures in those files still come from partisan channels.
What the public record does support is a sharp contrast. On September 27, the army chief of Abiy Ahmed’s regime told Al Jazeera it is answering Tigray-front provocations with wisdom, restraint, and strategic calm while blaming Eritrea. On September 26, AAA warned that more than twenty-nine high-profile Amhara prisoners of conscience face life-threatening detention conditions, that seven were transferred since the evening of September 25, and that Dr. Wondwossen Assefa’s health has deteriorated after a Kaliti-to-Kilinto move. On the same weekend, Al Jazeera carried a Fano claim of more than ten seized military trucks in Amhara, and Zegabi’s recent English files still show multi-zone Amhara fighting and contested North Wollo captures after years of war that began intensifying in April 2023. For Amhara civilians, prisoners’ families, and communities along North Wollo and the wider eight-zone map, the regime in Addis Ababa is asking the world to hear restraint on one front while the Amhara detention file and the Amhara battlefield stay loud.
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