Home · World · Oct 3 archive
What to Know About Fighting Between Ethiopia and Rebels in Tigray
Confirmed
In Short: According to local sources speaking to AFP, the TPLF rebels have made significant advances in Tigray, seizing local airports and launching attacks into the neighboring states of Afar and Amhara.
The Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) has seized control of three airports in Tigray and launched attacks into neighboring states, reigniting fears of a full-blown civil war.
Photos taken by a local journalist showed the facade of the Tigray TV building damaged and blackened, with numerous windows blown out by the explosion.
The TPLF's offensive in Afar is aimed at cutting supplies from Djibouti, which provides almost all of Ethiopia’s international trade cargo, including fuel.
The TPLF rebels denounced what they described as a “large-scale infantry offensive” by the Ethiopian army, accusing it of having “intensified its destructive actions and taken them to a higher level”.
The conflict could draw in neighboring Eritrea on the side of the rebels, as it fears landlocked Ethiopia has been planning to invade and seize a direct point of access to the Red Sea.
The TPLF's actions have also led to significant disruption of phone and internet services in Tigray, making reporting on the conflict difficult.
What's confirmed
- The federal government had also been squeezing the region economically, by withholding funds needed to pay Tigray’s civil servants and limiting access to banks and fuel, according to the TPLF.
- The TPLF began handing over heavy weapons in line with the accord, but further disarmament never happened as a result of a failure of Eritrean and other nonfederal forces to withdraw from parts of Tigray.
- The agreement also required Tigray’s representation in federal institutions, including both houses of parliament.
- Four years after a fragile ceasefire ended widespread conflict in Ethiopia, the region is again slipping back into full-out war.
- 23, 2026, advancing soldiers of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) seized government positions in northern Ethiopia.
- The November 2022 Pretoria Cessation of Hostilities Agreement ended immediate fighting between Ethiopia and Tigrayan rebels, but it did not constitute a comprehensive peace settlement.
- Throughout August and September, the region of Tigray – Ethiopia’s northernmost constituent state, with an estimated population of roughly 7 million – has been subjected to federal air and drone attacks.
- The TPLF ruled the whole of Ethiopia from 1991 to 2018 before being sidelined with Abiy Ahmed Ali’s rise to the prime minister’s post.
- Its offensive in Afar is aimed at cutting supplies from Djibouti, which provides almost all of Ethiopia’s international trade cargo, including fuel.
What's still developing
- Israel’s Foreign Ministry said Sunday that it was leading “feverish efforts” to assist some 20 Israeli citizens who are stuck in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, amid a rebel advance in the area.
- A humanitarian source said the Afar town of Erebti, near the border with Tigray, had fallen to the rebels on Sunday after being pounded by heavy artillery.
- Heavy clashes resumed between the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and the federal government last week, raising fears of a return to the full-blown civil war of 2020-2022 in which an estimated 600,000 people died.
- “The security tensions occurring at the border between Sudan and Ethiopia take place against the backdrop of the fighting between the Ethiopian army and the Tigray fighters in this area,” said Al Jazeera’s Osama Sayed Ahmad, reporting from Ad-Damazin, the capital of Blue Nile, Sudan.
- Federal troops and Tigrayan forces have for several months been massed along the border of northern Tigray in the north of Ethiopia, with both sides accusing each other of wanting to trigger a new conflict.
- Heavy fighting resumed between federal forces and the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) last week, and fighting has been ongoing across several fronts in northern Ethiopia.
- "The TPLF is silently allied with its former foe, Eritrea, with supply lines chiefly secured through Tigray's northern border," the Chatham House think tank said in a report.
- As a result, it allowed sanctions on Ethiopia and Eritrea to end, with the ill-timed claim that the "national emergency... has expired".
- Tensions have been rising for months between the federal government and the authorities in the northern Tigray state.
- Get more Daily Tribune stories in your search results ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AFP) — Tigray rebels in Ethiopia told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Thursday they were in a state of “full-blown war” with the federal government, as heavy artillery attacks were reported in neighboring states.
- A humanitarian source in Afar told AFP there were heavy artillery attacks by the rebels on Thursday as they attempted to take control of the town of Yallo, near the Tigrayan border.
- The rebels took control of Abala, also on the Tigray-Afar border, on Wednesday, according to a foreign security source based in Ethiopia, while a TPLF source said they had seized several other Afar towns, though this could not be confirmed.