{"id":837252,"date":"2026-10-05T11:36:32","date_gmt":"2026-10-05T15:36:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/?p=837252"},"modified":"2026-10-24T14:01:24","modified_gmt":"2026-10-24T18:01:24","slug":"about-150000-displaced-in-northern-afar-as-ethiopian-government-forces-retake-abala-and-erebti","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/837252","title":{"rendered":"About 150,000 displaced in northern Afar during a week of fighting"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Armed<\/p>\n

About 150,000 people were displaced from three northern Afar districts during a week of fighting that ended with federal and Afar forces retaking Abala and Erebti, residents and a rights official told DW Amharic. Ge’az Ahmed, head of the Afar Human Rights Organisation, told DW that Erebti, Abala and Megale in Zone Two had taken heavy humanitarian damage after armed groups he described as the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and its allies entered the area. He said the Erebti health station and other sites were hit by heavy weapons fire, and that displaced people had moved toward Afdera woreda and a location about 30 kilometers from Erebti.<\/p>\n

An Erebti town resident who had fled to Afdera told DW Amharic that over three days, from Monday through Wednesday, federal forces and Afar regional security units fought the groups that had held the area for about a week, and that by the day of the interview all of those woredas were back under federal and regional control. “The TPLF and its allies had taken Abala, the zone seat, and Erebti; yesterday they left Erebti, and today they have fully left Abala as well,” the resident said, according to DW’s Amharic report. Ge’az Ahmed said federal defence forces, Afar regional forces and the Tigray Peace Forces fought together to push the armed groups out, with Megale and Erebti cleared first and Abala the next day.<\/p>\n

Critical Threats, in its October 2 Ethiopia War Security Review, said Ethiopian federal forces had almost completely reversed Afar and Tigrayan rebel gains in the Afar region. The project reported that the Afar Revolutionary Democratic Unity Front and Tigray Defense Forces had taken Abala, about 30 miles east of Mekelle, on September 22, then advanced to take Erebti, about 75 miles east of Mekelle, on September 27. Those towns sit on a secondary highway that connects toward the A1 Ethio-Djibouti highway near Semera, the Afar regional capital. Critical Threats said the ENDF and Tigray Peace Forces launched counterattacks on that highway on October 1 and reportedly retook both Abala and Erebti. The review footnoted open-source posts on X from accounts including AfriMEOSINT and Ethiomapping when laying out that Abala and Erebti timeline. The Tigray Peace Forces separately claimed on October 2 to have advanced west into Tigray and taken Mizilat, about 15 miles southeast of Mekelle; Critical Threats said it could not verify that claim.<\/p>\n

Dr Jalale Getachew Birru, an East Africa senior analyst at ACLED who spoke to Euronews while rebels still held parts of northern Afar, said the federal government had treated the fighting as manageable while the Djibouti corridor stayed open. “The TPLF’s advance in collaboration with Ugugumo into Afar could change that calculation if it threatens the Semera-Djibouti route,” she said. “Control of this route could give the TPLF significant leverage over the federal government by threatening Ethiopia’s main trade corridor to the port of Djibouti.” Laetitia Bader, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Africa division, told the same outlet that an uptake in fighting raised the risk to civilians “at a time when diplomatic attention and scrutiny of the situation have reduced,” and that the region already faced devastating human rights and humanitarian crises, with neighbouring Sudan facing what she called the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world.<\/p>\n

Ahmed Hussein, an Afar regional deputy official quoted by Al Jazeera during the offensive, said Ethiopia faced an unprecedented attack that sought to undermine the regional administration and install figures loyal to Eritrea, and he called on Asmara to withdraw from Afar territory. Al Jazeera’s field reporting at the time also said more than 80,000 Afar residents remained trapped in areas still contested. A humanitarian source later told AFP that the TPLF was out of Afar and that the humanitarian situation had changed little because fighters “raided and destroyed as they left” and there was “no access to food in the north.”<\/p>\n

Ge’az Ahmed told DW that information on deaths, injuries and destroyed homes was still incomplete while the districts were under armed control, and that fuller tallies would be possible only after the fighters left. He said reports already pointed to people killed, wounded and left without homes, and that he had information that many civilians were killed as the fighters left Abala. DW Amharic noted that Afar regional communications officials had earlier confirmed attacks on the three woredas, and that claims of Eritrean army participation in the Afar fighting had not been independently verified by DW from another source.<\/p>\n

Ge’az Ahmed told DW that damage was severe and that communities had already lost homes and services during the week under armed control. The resident who spoke from Afdera said the fighting around Abala and Erebti over those three days was heavy. The 150,000 figure comes from the people DW Amharic interviewed, and a full count of the dead was not yet available. The federal advance that cleared the three woredas also freed units to press west toward Mekelle, which Ethiopian Government forces and allies entered after the TPLF said it had temporarily left the regional capital.<\/p>\n

Sources:<\/strong><\/p>\n