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On Wednesday, September 23, the Tigray regional government said its forces had entered a \u201cdefensive war\u201d against federal troops, hours after Tigrayan fighters seized Mekelle\u2019s Alula Aba Nega Airport from federal police overnight. Reuters reported the regional statement and noted that there was no immediate comment from the Ethiopian federal government. Residents of Mekelle told the BBC that local forces took over the city\u2019s airport early Wednesday. An airport worker speaking to Euronews said a supervisor called staff on the way to work and told them Tigray forces controlled the field and that there were no flights, so they should go home.<\/p>\n
Ethiopian Airlines suspended flights to Mekelle, Shire, and Axum \u201cdue to the current situation,\u201d according to statements carried by Al Jazeera, the BBC, Euronews, and DW. For families who still move between northern cities and Addis Ababa by air, that suspension is one of the first clear civilian signals that the Pretoria peace track has broken again in public view. Alula Aba Nega is normally under federal police guard. Local and security sources told Euronews the force left at the airport was small and that its situation after the takeover was unknown.<\/p>\n
Getachew Reda, an adviser to Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and a former TPLF official who left Tigray\u2019s interim politics and joined the federal government, wrote on X that the TPLF had seized federally controlled airports in Tigray and launched an \u201call out offensive\u201d against government positions in Afar and Amhara. He called the move heartbreaking after efforts by many actors, including the international community, to avoid another round of war in Tigray. The BBC and Al Jazeera carried that message alongside the regional government\u2019s own language. Tigray authorities accused Addis Ababa of an \u201copen invasion\u201d and of intensive bombardments with aircraft, drones, and artillery on Tuesday, and said the Tigray army had been instructed to counter what it called a genocidal invasion.<\/p>\n
Those two stories cannot both be true in full, and readers should keep both claims attributed. What multiple sources do agree on is that fighting is no longer limited to Tigray\u2019s internal map. Four sources speaking to Reuters, including a senior Ethiopian government official, a diplomatic source, a humanitarian source, and a source with links to the TPLF and an allied militia, said that in Afar, Tigrayan forces were fighting alongside a local armed group, and that in Amhara they were fighting alongside Fano militia. Euronews, citing NGO, humanitarian, and foreign security sources, reported clashes since the previous night in Abala and Erebti in Afar, with expectations that displacement would grow. A former TPLF senior official claimed Tigrayan control of several Afar localities including Berhale, Erebti, Abala, Megale, Dalul, and Konoba, and said federal forces were retreating fast. Those territorial claims remain contested and are not independently verified line by line.<\/p>\n
Civilian harm in southern Tigray was already on the record before the airport seizure. Alamata\u2019s mayor, Mogos Shiferaw, told the BBC that more than five drones and one fighter jet carried out more than 21 strikes starting around 03:30 on Tuesday, killing at least 14 people and injuring 22. He said all those killed and injured were civilians and alleged that two secondary schools were hit on suspicion that Tigrayan forces were using them. The mayor said the schools, which had served as federal military bases during the earlier civil war, were unoccupied because the academic year had not yet begun. The BBC said it had not independently verified the allegations, and the Ethiopian Government had not commented on the alleged strikes. The U.S. State Department\u2019s Bureau of African Affairs separately condemned a Monday drone strike that it said hit a convoy of Catholic vehicles carrying food aid, called for an investigation, and urged dialogue.<\/p>\n
That Tigray ledger sits beside a war in Amhara that was already multi-zone under Abiy Ahmed\u2019s regime. The Amhara Association of America\u2019s September 14-20 update, published September 21, said battle events and rights violations were recorded in more than 21 woreda and city administrations across 11 Amhara zones: North Wollo, South Wollo, North Shewa, East Gojjam, West Gojjam, North Gojjam, Awi, South Gonder, Central Gonder, West Gonder, and Welkait-Tegede-Setit Humera. AAA recorded civilian casualties in five districts across five zones, abductions in Enemay Woreda of East Gojjam, and drone activity in Meket, Dera, and Alefa. AAA is a U.S.-based advocacy NGO that documents Amhara-side harm, so its partisan framing should be handled carefully, but the geographic width of its weekly map is hard to dismiss when Wednesday\u2019s fighting reportedly pulls Tigrayan units onto Amhara ground beside Fano.<\/p>\n
Zegabi\u2019s earlier September Amhara file, drawing on AAA\u2019s September 7-13 week, already described fighting across eight Amhara zones with civilian harm and drone strikes, including contested claims around schools and rural compounds. That reporting undercut any picture of Amhara as a finished \u201claw and order\u201d cleanup. When Reuters sources now say Tigrayan forces are fighting alongside Fano in Amhara, they are describing an escalation layered onto a war that Amhara communities have lived with since 2023, not a sudden opening of a quiet hinterland. Fano fought on the federal side against the TPLF in 2020-2022 and then rose against Abiy Ahmed\u2019s federal government. That history makes joint Amhara-Tigray battlefield work politically explosive even when alliance statements put both names on the same letterhead.<\/p>\n
The political timeline helps explain how Wednesday arrived so fast. On Sunday, September 21, seven armed groups announced the Ethiopian Peoples\u2019 Forces Alliance for Survival, also called the Alliance for Survival, and said they aimed to remove Abiy Ahmed\u2019s government and install a transitional authority. Reuters reported that the lineup includes the TPLF and the Amhara Fano National Movement, former battlefield opponents from the Tigray war, along with groups from Oromia, Afar, Somali, and Benishangul-Gumuz regions. Abiy Ahmed\u2019s spokesperson Billene Seyoum told Reuters that alliance members had been collaborating for a while with financial backing from Eritrea. Asmara has repeatedly denied similar accusations. International Crisis Group\u2019s Horn director Alan Boswell told Al Jazeera the Pretoria Agreement\u2019s breakdown has left the situation very dangerous, and that the TPLF\u2019s join-up with other groups to topple the current regime sits close to a declaration of war.<\/p>\n
The African Union\u2019s earlier estimate that some 600,000 people died in the 2020-2022 Tigray war remains the scale against which every new escalation is measured. About one million people are still displaced from that conflict, according to reporting carried by Al Jazeera and Euronews, and large parts of Pretoria\u2019s politics were never finished. In May the TPLF restored its pre-war administration and disbanded an interim body appointed by Abiy Ahmed. In July, Abiy Ahmed told parliament the TPLF was preparing for renewed conflict. Sporadic clashes, reported drone campaigns, and contested recruitment claims filled the months between those speeches and Wednesday\u2019s airport seizure. Pretoria did not die in one night, but Wednesday made the break visible to anyone watching flight boards and border roads.<\/p>\n
For Amhara civilians, the practical questions are local. Will Tigray-Fano coordination bring more artillery and drones into towns that AAA already lists as active? Will federal joint forces treat Amhara communities as rear areas for a northern war? Will aid corridors that already struggle under Amhara fighting close further when Afar and Tigray fronts move at the same time? Humanitarian sources in Afar told Euronews they were already sending food trucks toward newly displaced people. Similar language has appeared for years in Amhara weekly updates when drone strikes and woreda-level fighting interrupt harvests, schools, and clinics. The Alliance for Survival announcement does not answer those questions. It only shows that groups which once fought each other now claim a shared goal against Abiy Ahmed\u2019s regime while Amhara\u2019s eleven-zone map from mid-September was still hot.<\/p>\n
Verification limits should stay in the open. Airport control in Mekelle is supported by residents, an airport employee, foreign security sources, and Getachew Reda\u2019s own accusation that airports were seized. Ethiopian Airlines\u2019 suspension of Mekelle, Shire, and Axum is on the public record through multiple outlets. Alamata\u2019s death and injury toll rests on the mayor\u2019s account to the BBC and is not independently verified. Afar town lists and \u201cfast-retreating\u201d claims come from partisan or anonymous sources. Reuters\u2019 four-source confirmation of Fano and local Afar co-fighting is stronger than a single anonymous tip, but it is still not a full open-source battle map. AAA\u2019s eleven-zone Amhara count and Zegabi\u2019s prior Amhara files describe the war that was already underway; they do not invent Wednesday\u2019s Tigray events.<\/p>\n
What the public record supports on September 23 is a plain set of facts. Tigray\u2019s regional government says it is in a defensive war with the Ethiopian federal government after overnight seizure of Mekelle\u2019s main airport. Abiy Ahmed\u2019s adviser says the TPLF seized federally controlled airports and launched an all-out offensive into Afar and Amhara. Ethiopian Airlines grounded three northern routes. Reuters sources say Tigrayan forces are fighting beside a local armed group in Afar and beside Fano in Amhara. Amhara\u2019s mid-September AAA map already showed eleven zones at war under Abiy Ahmed\u2019s regime. The Alliance for Survival is two days old. Together those pieces describe an escalation that pulls Tigray\u2019s broken peace into Amhara\u2019s unfinished war, with civilians again standing closest to the blast radius.<\/p>\n
Sources:<\/strong><\/p>\n Reuters<\/a> BBC<\/a> Al Jazeera<\/a> Amhara Association of America<\/a> Zegabi<\/a> Reuters (alliance)<\/a> Euronews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On Wednesday, September 23, the Tigray regional government said its forces had entered a \u201cdefensive war\u201d against federal troops, hours after Tigrayan fighters seized Mekelle\u2019s Alula Aba Nega Airport from federal police overnight. Reuters reported the regional statement and noted that there was no immediate comment from the Ethiopian federal government. Residents of Mekelle told […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":754890,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-754891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ethiopian-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/horn-feat-2.jpg?fit=1280%2C213&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-3anF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/52"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=754891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/754890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=754891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=754891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=754891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}