![The hills around Adwa in Tigray's Central Zone, site of the 1896 Battle of Adwa, 31 January 2018 (A.Savin, via Wikimedia Commons, Free Art License) [file photo]](https://i0.wp.com/mereja.com/index/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/tigray-adwa-2018-savin-20261006100121-8f2c.jpg?resize=780%2C439&ssl=1)
The hills around Adwa in Tigray’s Central Zone, site of the 1896 Battle of Adwa, 31 January 2018 (A.Savin, via Wikimedia Commons, Free Art License) [file photo]
Drone strikes in northwestern and central Tigray killed at least 17 people over the weekend, among them displaced families sheltering in a camp in Shiraro, as federal forces and Tigrayan fighters traded artillery fire near the Tekeze River and the United Nations said aid warehouses had been looted during the chaos that followed the fall of Mekelle.
A bulletin circulated among humanitarian groups and seen by Reuters said airstrikes killed at least nine people in Adwa, about 100 kilometers northwest of Mekelle, and eight in Shiraro, also spelled Sheraro, near the Eritrean border. The bulletin did not say who carried out the strikes, and spokespeople for the prime minister’s office, the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) did not respond to Reuters. Addis Standard described the attacks as part of a series of federal drone strikes across Tigray in recent weeks.
The strike in Shiraro hit a part of the displacement camp known as Adi Abay at about 2:15 a.m., an eyewitness told Addis Standard. The camp shelters people who fled Western Tigray during the 2020 to 2022 war. The witness said the drone struck a shelter where about 100 displaced people were staying, killing nine and wounding 14, and that two of the wounded were in a coma. “The most distressing part was that a mother was killed together with her days-old baby,” the witness said. Many of the dead and wounded were relatives, and camp residents said it was the second drone attack on the site.
An aid worker and a witness gave AFP a toll of eight dead, including a child, and at least six seriously wounded. Another witness told AFP that “a mother along with her four children and one grandson were killed in the strike,” adding, “The entire family was wiped out.” A displaced man who spoke to Addis Standard said people in the camp were not sleeping at night. “We are displaced and have nothing to do with anything,” he said.
In Adwa, residents said drones hit several hotels, including the Shewit International, Pan Africa, Soloda and Segenet hotels. One resident told Addis Standard the death toll could be as high as nine, a figure the paper could not confirm, and said all of those killed were civilians. A source told UMD Media that the Soloda Hotel was badly damaged and that six civilians died there. Residents said some families had left Adwa for the countryside, while shops were closed and many people stayed indoors. A second aid worker confirmed the strikes in Adwa to Reuters but had no casualty figures.
On the ground, the humanitarian bulletin said government forces and Tigrayan fighters exchanged heavy artillery fire on Monday morning close to the Tekeze River near Mai Tsebri, south of Shire.
In Mekelle, which the TPLF left without a fight on Saturday, residents told DW Amharic that the city was calmer on Tuesday but that gunfire from unknown shooters could still be heard in different neighborhoods. UN spokesman Farhan Haq said aid warehouses in Tigray had been looted during the unrest, DW reported. Among the places hit in Mekelle was the treatment and rehabilitation hospital for wounded veterans known locally as Awash. A disabled veteran told DW that the thieves “were pulling us off the beds to take the mattresses we were lying on.” Residents blamed much of the looting on convicted prisoners released at random as regional officials left the city, and one resident said he had seen children carrying weapons that TPLF fighters had abandoned.
Elsewhere in Tigray, residents described an uneasy quiet. A resident of Axum told BBC Amharic that neither federal soldiers nor fighters of the government-allied Tigray Peace Force (TPF) could be seen in the town. In Maichew, in southern Tigray, a resident said about 11 people had been hurt by heavy weapons in the first week of the fighting, federal troops entered the town on Thursday, and mobile banking resumed on Sunday as banks began to reopen. A Mekelle resident told the BBC that reports of Eritrean troops entering through Zalambessa and Shiraro had deepened people’s fear.
The TPLF-led administration that left Mekelle has not given up its claims of success. In a statement on the Facebook page of the regional president’s office, reported by DW Amharic, it said Tigrayan forces were “achieving a great victory” and warned that an enemy that had boasted “the sky is ours” was beginning to see that this was untrue, adding, “it will continue.”
On social media, the Ethiopian news website borkena (@zborkena) also pointed to the Adwa attack in an Amharic post on Monday that promoted its video news roundup, describing “a drone attack targeting hotels in Adwa.” The post gave no casualty figure and did not say who carried out the strike. Axum Tsion (@tsion_axum) wrote in Tigrinya of the hope that the mothers of Tigray would find a peace in which their sons live, “whether from TDF or TPF.” The conflict-mapping account Ethiomapping (@Ethiomapping) reported on Tuesday that Amhara militiamen calling themselves “Raya Zeb” had been disarmed by the TPF and the ENDF after an altercation, which had not been independently verified.
The war is also moving in Amhara. Thomas van Linge (@ThomasVLinge), who maps conflicts from open sources, wrote on Tuesday that fighting had gone on for two days near Mekane Selam in South Wollo and that Fano fighters had advanced east and south of the town, while the Mekane Selam city administration said the situation remained under control.
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