Ethiopian forces and Tigray Peace Force enter Aksum as TDF claims Tembien towns

The Obelisk of Axum at the Northern Stelae Park in Aksum, Tigray, January 2018 (A. Savin, Wikimedia Commons, Free Art License) [file photo]

Ethiopian government forces and allied Tigray Peace Force fighters have entered the historic city of Aksum in northern Tigray, Anadolu Agency reported on Thursday, citing the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.

ACLED said Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF) and Tigray Peace Force (TPF) fighters moved into Aksum while rival Tigrayan fighters remained in surrounding mountainous areas. The same monitor reported Eritrean troops withdrawing across the border through Zalambessa after federal and allied advances into several strategic towns, and it recorded Ethiopian tanks and heavy weapons moving toward the Eritrean frontier earlier in the week.

Solomon Hailemariam, a spokesperson for the TPF, claimed on Thursday that Eritrean forces had taken heavy losses in the fighting and were pulling back toward the border, Anadolu Agency said. Eritrean Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel rejected those claims as false in comments to local media. The agency said the scale of the reported losses could not be independently verified.

The Tigray Peace Force account on X said Thursday that TPF and ENDF fighters had “freed” Aksum and the towns of Adi Fitaw and Ahsea, about five kilometers from the Eritrean border, and that Eritrean troops withdrew as allied forces advanced. That border-town claim has not been independently verified.

At the same time, Tigray Defense Forces linked to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) said they had retaken towns in central Tigray. Dawan Africa reported that the TDF said it “liberated” Abiy Addi, Shewate Higum and Yechila in the Tembien area on Wednesday after attacking government forces, and that it had seized weapons. Government-aligned sources had said earlier that federal forces and allies captured Abiy Addi, and the U.S. Embassy said on October 12 that multiple sources reported its capture.

Rich Tedd, who posts open-source analysis as AfriMEOSINT, shared screenshots from Tigray TV on X and summarized the same Tembien claim. He warned that no visual evidence had emerged to back the reported captures of “Abiyi Adi, Hugum and Yechila.”

AfriMEOSINT also posted photographs on Thursday of drones and munitions that the ENDF said it captured from the TDF, including Turkish-made YIHA-III loitering munitions, an Iranian-made Mohajer-6 UAV and Qaem precision-guided bombs marked as manufactured in 2023. In follow-up posts he argued those particular systems were built after the ENDF left Tigray at the end of the 2020 to 2022 war, so claims that they were simply battlefield leftovers from that earlier conflict do not fit the markings.

Anadolu Agency English summarized the Aksum entry and the Eritrean withdrawal reports on X, placing them beside ACLED’s border warning. Radar Africa posted video on X that it said shows armed personnel walking along a street in Kerseber, near Zalambessa, but the footage has not been independently verified.

The fighting threatens the 2022 Pretoria agreement that paused the earlier Tigray war. Ethiopia and Eritrea fought on the same side then and have since fallen out over regional security and Addis Ababa’s push for Red Sea access. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on Wednesday and called for de-escalation, the State Department said.

Eritrea has denied accusations that its forces entered Tigray to support armed opposition groups, and it has accused Ethiopia of threatening its sovereignty, Anadolu Agency noted. Addis Ababa, for its part, has told the U.N. Security Council that it faces an Eritrean incursion and has little choice but to defend itself, BBC Amharic reported. Those letters sit beside the street-level claims from Aksum and Tembien without settling them.

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Ethiopian forces and Tigray Peace Force enter Aksum as TDF claims Tembien towns

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