Amnesty International said on October 2 that the African Union must convene an emergency session of its Peace and Security Council as fighting that broke out around September 21 expands across Tigray and into parts of Afar and Amhara. The rights group said it has kept receiving credible reports of shelling and air strikes that destroy civilian objects, of intensified forced conscription, and of other acts that may break international humanitarian and human rights law.
Tigere Chagutah, Amnesty International’s regional director for East and Southern Africa, said the Peace and Security Council cannot wait for mass atrocities or a surge in civilian deaths before putting Ethiopia, the AU’s host country, on the agenda. He said the AU helped guarantee the ceasefire that has now effectively collapsed, and that the Council should activate its response tools and mobilize member states before it is too late. He also warned that fears of the war spreading across borders are rising.
Amnesty described the fighting as a clash between Tigrayan forces and their allies, including Amhara Fano forces, on one side, and the Ethiopian National Defence Force, or ENDF, and its allies on the other. The organization said fighting has intensified across southern Tigray and northern Amhara and western Afar since the new round began about a week before its statement. Heavy weapons have been widely used, Amnesty said, and aerial attacks have hit sites across Tigray, including the historic town of Axum and the regional capital Mekelle.
The group said it is especially alarmed by reports that civilian infrastructure, including several schools, has been damaged or targeted in aerial attacks. Fighting with heavy weapons around Maychew and Alamata has reportedly left civilians dead or wounded and put critical civilian infrastructure at further risk, Amnesty said. Those towns sit on the southern approaches into Tigray, where federal advances and rebel counter-moves have already drawn hospital and humanitarian attention in recent days.
Communications blackouts deepen the civilian risk. Amnesty said the disruption of phone and internet service across Tigray and parts of Afar and Amhara, together with tighter limits on civic space by the Ethiopian Government, raises serious concern that grave abuses could unfold out of sight. Chagutah said cutting communications in conflict areas is a well documented pattern in Ethiopia’s wars, and that such restrictions have often hidden atrocities and cut civilians off from help. He called on the relevant authorities to restore communications at once so people are not shut away from life-saving information and assistance.
That blackout picture matches reporting carried by Zegabi on September 25. The Amhara-focused outlet cited the web monitor NetBlocks on a subnational internet disruption in northern Ethiopia that lined up with reports of a telecoms blackout in Tigray, as fighting between Ethiopian Government forces and Tigrayan units spilled toward Amhara and Afar. AFP, according to coverage relayed by RFI and Al Jazeera and summarized by Zegabi, could not reach sources in Tigray by phone that day. A Mekelle shopkeeper told AFP people were rushing to stock up because they feared banks, phones, power and basic goods could be cut again.
Zegabi, drawing on the Amhara Association of America’s weekly update for September 7 to 13, reported battle events and rights violations across more than eleven woreda or city administrations in eight Amhara zones, including North Wollo, South Wollo, North Shewa, East Gojjam, West Gojjam, Awi, North Gojjam and Central Gonder. AAA logged civilian casualties and detentions in North Mecha and Wegera, drone activity near Bahir Dar, and alleged drone strikes on primary schools in Dera Woreda during student registration, Zegabi said. Many battlefield casualty and prisoner numbers in that file come from partisan channels and remain hard to verify independently, the outlet noted.
Fano forces, which Amhara communities often describe as local self-defense forces, have fought Abiy Ahmed’s Prosperity Party government across the region since 2023. In this new northern round, Amnesty’s framing places Amhara Fano units among the allies fighting beside Tigrayan forces against the ENDF. The Critical Threats Project’s Ethiopia War Security Review dated September 29 said the Amhara Fano National Movement and the Tigray Defense Forces, the military wing of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF, initially pushed south into northeastern Amhara on the A2 highway from about September 23, clashing near Kobo, before the ENDF halted that move and advanced north into southern Tigray, taking Alamata among other towns by September 28. Pro-Fano updates cited in that review also reported continued fighting around Kobo and Lalibela.
The political backdrop is the seven-group Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Alliance for Survival, often shortened to Alliance for Survival, announced in mid-September. Al Jazeera reported on September 21 that the alliance includes the Amhara Fano National Movement, the TPLF, the Oromo Liberation Army, the Ogaden National Liberation Front, the Afar Revolutionary Democratic Unity Front, the Benishangul Peoples’ Liberation Movement and the Gumuz Peoples’ Democratic Movement. Zemene Kassie, chair of the Amhara Fano National Movement, presented the alliance as its chair and said the groups aim to remove the current administration and set up an inclusive transitional government guided by a charter. Ethio Insight and Borkena carried matching membership lists and the same stated goals of ending internal wars, protecting rights and opening a national dialogue.
Critical Threats later reported that some smaller coalition members have said they do not militarily support the rebel offensive, even as the Sidama National Liberation Front announced it had joined. Ethiopia has accused Egypt, Eritrea and Sudan of backing the coalition; those states have denied the charges. Those foreign claims remain contested.
Amnesty placed the new fighting against six years of armed conflict across Ethiopia, including in Oromia, and said most of the armed actors tied to those wars have been linked to serious rights and humanitarian law violations, while meaningful independent accountability remains largely absent. Chagutah called on the AU, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, or IGAD, and the United Nations to protect civilians, renew independent investigations into serious violations by all parties, and keep the way open for journalists, humanitarian groups and human rights monitors.
The AU’s Peace and Security Council held its first session on Ethiopia only in November 2021 during the 2020-2022 northern war, a year after that conflict began, Amnesty recalled. The UN International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia described that earlier war as one of the deadliest conflicts of the twenty-first century. Hundreds of thousands died, millions were displaced, and thousands of women and girls faced conflict-related sexual violence and other grave abuses, according to the background Amnesty published with its October 2 call. A long communications blackout cut Tigray off from phone and internet service for more than a year in that earlier war. Hostilities formally ended in November 2022, Amnesty noted, yet hundreds of thousands of displaced people still cannot go home, and victims still wait for truth, justice and reparations.
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