标签： Africa

Four years after a brutal two-year civil war that killed an estimated 600,000 people and pushed the region to the brink of famine, large-scale violence has once again erupted in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, bringing deep-seated unresolved tensions to a breaking point and threatening to destabilize the entire Horn of Africa.

This week, Tigrayan forces have been openly patrolling the streets of Mekelle, Tigray’s capital, after clashes broke out between regional fighters aligned with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and Ethiopia’s federal national army. The violence has already spilled across Tigray’s borders into the neighboring Afar and Amhara regions, triggering panic among local populations who are still struggling to rebuild their lives after the 2020-2022 war.

Widespread reports of panic buying have emerged across Tigray, with residents rushing to stock up on basic food supplies amid fears of a return to full-blown conflict. Compounding the crisis, internet and cellular communications across the region have been cut off. In a region that has operated largely as a cashless society since ATMs stopped functioning months ago, the service disruption has cut residents off from their savings via mobile banking apps, leaving Mekelle effectively out of accessible cash.

The latest escalation comes after more than six months of steadily deteriorating relations between Ethiopia’s federal government in Addis Ababa and the TPLF, the long-governing political party of Tigray. The African Union-brokered Pretoria Peace Agreement signed in November 2022 ended the original civil war, but four core contentious issues were never resolved, creating a tinderbox that has now ignited.

Two of the most divisive disputes center on western Tigray, a fertile border territory that the TPLF lost control of to Amhara regional forces fighting alongside the Ethiopian federal army in the opening weeks of the 2020 war. Amhara has long claimed that the territory was wrongfully assigned to Tigray when national regional borders were redrawn following the 1991 overthrow of Ethiopia’s Marxist military regime. When Amhara forces seized western Tigray in 2020, hundreds of thousands of ethnic Tigrayans were displaced, and they now remain stuck in makeshift displacement camps across Tigray and Addis Ababa. The TPLF demands the return of western Tigray and the safe repatriation of all displaced residents, while the federal government has called for a referendum to decide the territory’s final status.

For the federal government, the primary point of contention has been disarmament. Addis Ababa accuses the TPLF of only surrendering outdated, obsolete weaponry to AU monitors while hiding a large stockpile of functional arms. The two sides have also clashed over the governance of Tigray: under the terms of the Pretoria Agreement, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed appointed an interim regional administration, but tensions over federal interference eventually split the TPLF. Shortly before May’s national general election – which was never held in Tigray due to insecurity – the TPLF restored its pre-war leadership and dissolved the Abiy-appointed interim government. The resulting political standoff has left regional civil servants unpaid and core public services crippled, worsening already fragile economic conditions in the region.

A major new development that has upended the conflict landscape is the TPLF’s formation of a new anti-government coalition. In early September 2026, the TPLF joined six other armed opposition groups to launch the Alliance for Survival, which includes prominent anti-government groups such as Amhara’s Fano militia and the Oromo Liberation Army. Though the alliance members hold disparate grievances against Abiy’s government, they share a single core goal: the removal of Abiy’s administration from power. Even former wartime rivals like the TPLF and Fano – who remain at odds over the future of western Tigray – have set aside their differences to align against the federal government, a strategic move TPLF officials say is intended to avoid the isolation they faced at the start of the 2020 war. Analysts caution, however, that the alliance’s competing underlying interests may make it unstable long-term.

Both sides have traded blame for who initiated the latest escalation. The TPLF claims it is responding to a pre-planned federal offensive that included drone strikes on Tigrayan positions, while the federal government says the TPLF struck first after seizing control of major airports across Tigray. Federal forces have continued to deploy drones and ground operations against Tigrayan positions, with the government justifying the actions as self-defense against unprovoked attacks. Independent verification of on-the-ground details remains difficult, but local residents of one targeted town reported that drone strikes hit two former school buildings that were used as Ethiopian military bases during the original war – a site the federal government apparently suspects is now being used by Tigrayan forces. There are also unconfirmed reports that the TPLF has been forcibly conscripting young Tigrayan men to bolster its fighting ranks.

Beyond internal tensions, the crisis has the potential to draw in neighboring powers and widen into a broader regional conflict. Addis Ababa has accused neighboring Eritrea of supporting the new anti-government alliance, a claim Eritrea’s government in Asmara denies. Eritrea fought alongside Ethiopian federal forces during the 2020-2022 war, but relations between the two neighbors have collapsed once again in recent months over access to Red Sea ports. Ethiopia, the world’s most populous landlocked country, has lacked sovereign access to Red Sea ports since Eritrea’s 1993 secession, and Abiy has recently publicly pushed for control of Eritrea’s southern port of Assab, located just 37 miles from the shared border, even hinting at a potential military seizure to secure the facility. Further afield, the two opposing warring factions in Sudan’s ongoing civil war back opposite sides in the Tigray conflict, creating another layer of potential spillover.

Diplomatic efforts to de-escalate the crisis are already underway. The African Union, which brokered the 2022 peace deal, has called for an immediate ceasefire and a return to direct bilateral negotiations, and has dispatched its special Horn of Africa envoy, former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, to engage both parties urgently. The United Nations and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (Igad), the East African regional bloc, have both issued matching calls for an end to hostilities and a resumption of dialogue.

Despite these diplomatic overtures, the outlook remains deeply concerning. Trust between the TPLF and the federal government has already been broken beyond repair after years of open conflict, and the formation of the new cross-regional armed alliance has added significant new complexity to an already volatile situation. The federal government is already grappling with separate active insurgencies in Amhara and Oromia regions, and the new alliance creates a political and military link between these separate conflicts that could see them merge into a nationwide challenge to Abiy’s rule. Analysts widely agree that the risk of a full-scale, countrywide conflict in Ethiopia is now very real, with devastating potential consequences for millions of civilians across the Horn of Africa.

Fresh violence has erupted in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region this week, pitting regional armed forces against the country’s national military and triggering widespread disruption to critical communications infrastructure across the area. All internet and cellular call services operated by Ethiopia’s state-owned telecom giant Ethio Telecom have been fully cut off amid the clashes, while only limited connectivity from the far smaller private provider Safaricom remains active for local residents.

Internet governance monitoring organization NetBlocks first confirmed the sub-national network shutdown via a post on the social platform X, noting that real-time network data clearly showed a total collapse of public connectivity across most of northern Tigray. Duke Burbridge, an American humanitarian worker based in Tigray’s capital city Mekelle, described the sudden blackout in an interview with BBC’s Newsday, saying “Last night telecommunications got knocked out.”

The BBC has not yet received an official response from Ethiopian federal authorities following a request for comment, and the outlet is currently restricted from carrying out independent on-the-ground reporting in Tigray and its surrounding border regions. For Burbridge and the millions of residents across the region, the communications shutdown comes on top of an already devastating eight-month cash shortage that has left most people unable to withdraw funds from local ATMs. “The lack of internet services will be devastating for everybody,” Burbridge warned.

The vast majority of daily commercial and personal transactions in Tigray now depend on digital banking and mobile money platforms, which require access to cellular networks operated by either Ethio Telecom or Safaricom. The new outbreak of violence began on Wednesday, when armed units aligned with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the region’s ruling political party, clashed with Ethiopian federal troops. Local reports have already documented widespread panic buying across major urban centers in Tigray, as residents brace for a potential return to the large-scale civil war that devastated the region between 2020 and 2022.

That two-year conflict ended with a November 2022 peace agreement, but left deep economic and social scars across Tigray. For most of the conflict, the entire region was fully cut off from global communications and outside aid, pushing hundreds of thousands of people into famine-like conditions due to acute shortages of food, medicine, and basic supplies. Researchers estimate that as many as 600,000 people died from violence, hunger, and lack of medical care during the conflict, making it one of the deadliest armed conflicts of the 21st century.

Tensions have escalated sharply in the week leading up to the latest clashes. On Sunday, the TPLF announced a new military alliance with six other armed opposition groups across Ethiopia, with the stated goal of ousting Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s federal government. By Wednesday, TPLF forces had seized control of three regional airports from federal police units, prompting Ethiopian Airlines, the country’s national flag carrier, to immediately cancel all scheduled flights to Tigray. Unconfirmed reports from the region also indicate that TPLF-aligned forces have launched cross-border attacks into the neighboring Afar and Amhara regions, raising the risk of the conflict spreading beyond Tigray’s borders.

Additional reporting for this story was contributed by Peter Mwai of BBC Verify. For more coverage of political and security developments across the African continent, readers can visit BBCAfrica.com, or follow BBC Africa on X, Facebook, and Instagram.

Escalating hostilities in Ethiopia’s Tigray region have pushed the regional capital Mekelle into a severe cash crisis, a local resident has told the BBC, painting a complex picture of stalled daily life under renewed conflict. While the city itself has not seen active frontline combat in the immediate period following the latest outbreak of fighting, widespread anxiety and uncertainty have gripped the population, the insider source confirms.

The acute cash shortage has left residents unable to access basic necessities, with local businesses struggling to operate and ATMs running dry after weeks of disrupted financial flows linked to the conflict. Though street-level calm currently holds in Mekelle, the underlying tension is palpable: ordinary people are bracing for further escalation, navigating the double stress of economic collapse and the ever-present threat of expanding violence. The renewed outbreak of hostilities in Tigray has derailed fragile peace efforts that had been building over recent months, leaving regional and international observers scrambling to urge both sides to return to negotiations before the crisis deepens into a full-scale humanitarian catastrophe.

After two years of a fragile, AU-brokered ceasefire, deadly hostilities have erupted once again across northern Ethiopia, bringing the country to the brink of a resumption of its devastating 2020–2022 civil war. Spiking tensions between Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the ruling party in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, boiled over into open combat on Wednesday, with both sides moving quickly to secure strategic territory.

In its first official public statement since fighting began, the Ethiopian National Army announced that it had successfully fended off coordinated assaults from TPLF fighters and their recently formed armed coalition in multiple northern border zones. According to the military’s account, the initial outbreak of hostilities occurred in the Amhara region, along its shared border with Tigray. The military claimed its forces inflicted heavy losses on TPLF combatants and seized a large stockpile of weapons from the attacking group.

Independent verification of the army’s claims remains impossible, as international media including the BBC are barred from entering Tigray and surrounding conflict zones, and the TPLF has not issued any formal response to the military’s statement. Unconfirmed reports from local and humanitarian sources, however, indicate TPLF forces have launched simultaneous offensives into both the neighboring Afar and Amhara regions.

A senior humanitarian source based in Afar told Agence France-Presse Thursday that TPLF fighters have launched intensive artillery barrages targeting the border town of Yallo, as they push to seize full control of the settlement. Speaking to AFP, TPLF vice-president Amanuel Assefa confirmed the collapse of the 2022 peace agreement, stating bluntly: “We are in the situation of full-blown war now.”

The latest escalation caps months of gradual deterioration in relations between the two sides, with both the federal government and Tigrayan authorities repeatedly accusing one another of violating the terms of the African Union-negotiated truce that ended the original 2020–2022 conflict. That war was one of the deadliest of the 21st century: the AU’s lead mediator estimated that roughly 600,000 people died from violence, famine, and lack of access to medical care, as the conflict pushed Tigray to the edge of a catastrophic humanitarian collapse. Just days before the current outbreak of fighting, the TPLF announced a new military alliance with six other armed opposition groups, with the explicit goal of ousting Abiy Ahmed’s federal government.

Since Wednesday, TPLF forces have seized control of three regional airports from federal police forces, including the main airport serving Mekelle, Tigray’s largest capital city. Following the seizure of aviation infrastructure, Ethiopian Airlines has suspended all commercial flights to the region. Multiple residents of Mekelle confirmed to the BBC that TPLF fighters are now visibly deployed across the city’s streets, though direct armed clashes have not yet broken out in the urban center.

Unlike the 2020–2022 war, which saw intense house-to-house fighting in Mekelle, all active combat is currently concentrated in outlying border areas. A Mekelle resident, who asked to be identified only as Fitsum to protect his safety, told the BBC’s *Newsday* program Thursday that the city remains outwardly calm, despite widespread fear among the population. “Mekelle is calm, except the stress from the people,” Fitsum said. He added that the city’s most pressing crisis is already economic, rooted in months of federal budget cuts that have left public sector workers unpaid and drained physical cash from local financial institutions.

“People are in a mood where they are distressed because it’s been so difficult, so tough. The last seven or eight months the government has been denying budgets to the civil servants and all the banks were running out of cash,” Fitsum explained. While residents have relied on mobile banking to access funds in recent months, widespread fears that communications infrastructure will be cut off amid the new fighting have left the population extremely vulnerable. “People are going to be in grave danger because there is almost no cash,” he added. Since fighting broke out, residents have largely stayed indoors and limited non-essential travel, leaving the city unusually quiet. “It’s like a curfew has been placed,” Fitsum said.

Recent drone strikes targeting locations inside Tigray in the days preceding the TPLF’s offensive have further stoked panic across the region, leaving global observers scrambling to de-escalate tensions before the conflict expands across the Horn of Africa.