Médecins Sans Frontières, also known as Doctors Without Borders or MSF, said on September 28 that it has suspended activities at Alamata hospital after war-wounded patients surged across northern Ethiopia as fighting resumed between the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF, and its allies and the Ethiopian National Defence Forces, or ENDF. The aid group’s project update said the renewed conflict has shattered a fragile 2022 peace agreement after a period of rising tensions, large-scale fighting and drone strikes. Between September 22 and 25, MSF said the number of war-wounded patients received in Korem and Alamata hospitals rose over forty-eight hours from around 180 to more than 420.
In northwestern Tigray, MSF teams supported Suhul hospital in Shire as more than 300 war-wounded patients arrived up to September 25, according to the same update. MSF said it continues to support healthcare activities in hospitals in Shire, Sheraro and Korem, including maternal and child health care. Outreach activities have also been suspended because of the security situation, and staff were redirected to hospitals where the group is seeing a sharp increase in war-wounded patients. MSF said it is monitoring community displacement as people flee the fighting and is preparing to respond to the needs of displaced people in Tigray, Amhara and Afar, while remaining concerned for civilian safety and access to health care.
Alamata’s place on the southern Tigray map helps explain why a hospital suspension there carries weight beyond one clinic compound. The town sits near the Amhara border and has been described as a supply hub, so when MSF redirects staff toward hospitals seeing sharper increases, the shift follows the movement of wounded people rather than a quiet administrative pause. MSF’s September 28 update also noted that the group supports health facilities across several Ethiopian regions in ordinary times, including Oromia, Somali, Amhara, Tigray, Afar, Gambella and Southwest Ethiopia, which underscores how suddenly a northern surge can pull capacity toward war-wounded care.
Those hospital numbers sit inside a wider northern war that Al Jazeera’s September 29 explainer described across Tigray, Amhara and Afar. The Tigray Peace Force, an armed group of Tigrayan fighters aligned with the federal government, said it had captured Alamata together with the national army. Alamata sits about 120 kilometres south of Mekelle, the capital of Tigray, and Al Jazeera described it as a supply hub for troops, fuel and food near Tigray’s southern border with Amhara. Video verified by the Reuters news agency showed soldiers walking through Alamata carrying Ethiopian flags, while two diplomatic sources told Reuters that the town had fallen.
The latest fighting erupted after Tigrayan rebel forces seized three airports in Tigray and pushed into neighbouring Afar and Amhara, according to Al Jazeera. The TPLF says it is fighting a defensive war and has accused federal forces of attacks using drones and heavy artillery, while Ethiopian Government forces and their allies have since counterattacked. Al Jazeera, citing an Ethiopian commander who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity, reported that TPLF forces seized Erebti, a strategically important Afar town, over the weekend. The Tigray Peace Force acknowledged that Erebti had fallen to the TPLF but disputed reports that the takeover followed intense fighting, according to AP.
An offensive in Afar could threaten supply routes from Djibouti, through which most Ethiopian imports including fuel pass, Al Jazeera noted. Afar’s governor told Al Jazeera that Eritrean forces were participating in the fighting, controlled more than two-thirds of the region, and were moving to cut the road linking Djibouti and Eritrea. The Eritrean government had not responded to those allegations when Al Jazeera published its explainer. Fighting has also spread into Amhara, including around North Wollo, where the Ethiopian military said about 270 Tigrayan fighters had been killed and more than 200 wounded. Those battlefield casualty figures are military claims and had not been independently verified in full.
Valerie Browning, cofounder of the Afar Pastoralist Development Association, told AP that about 150,000 people had been displaced since the latest fighting began. Al Jazeera also carried MSF’s patient surge figures for Korem, Alamata and Suhul, placing the medical pressure on civilian hospitals beside the contested front lines rather than behind a quiet rear area. Days before the latest offensive, the TPLF joined six other armed groups to form the Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Alliance for Survival, which said it wants to remove Abiy Ahmed’s government and establish a transitional administration. Al Jazeera named the Oromo Liberation Army and the Amhara Fano National Movement among the largest members of that coalition, noting that the alliance brings together groups that have previously fought one another.
For Amhara communities already living through a multi-zone war, a September 16 English-language summary of an Amhara Association of America weekly update covering September 7 to 13 logged fighting between Amhara Fano forces and units tied to Abiy Ahmed’s Prosperity Party government across eight Amhara zones: North Wollo, South Wollo, North Shewa, East Gojjam, West Gojjam, Awi, North Gojjam and Central Gonder. The Amhara Association of America, or AAA, is a United States-based advocacy organisation, so its framing should be read as advocacy documentation rather than as a court judgment. AAA’s file, as carried in that summary, recorded civilian-harm claims in North Mecha and Wegera, drone activity in Bahir-Dar-Zuriya, and coordinated drone-strike claims on primary schools in Sana and Mecho in Dera Woreda during student registration, whose precise toll had not been independently verified.
What the publicly named sources support this week is a northern war measured in hospital beds, suspended outreach, displacement estimates and fighting that has already reached Alamata, Erebti and multiple Amhara zones. MSF’s decision to suspend Alamata hospital work while continuing support in Shire, Sheraro and Korem is one of the clearest public signals of how quickly civilian care can be forced to shift when patient numbers jump from roughly 180 to more than 420 in two days. Contested Eritrea involvement claims, contested Alliance for Survival territorial claims, and contested kill counts from the Ethiopian military remain field and political allegations that had not been independently verified in full when the September 28 and 29 reports were published.
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