Ethiopia and Tigray Trade Offensive Claims as Peace Deal Teeters

Fighting between Ethiopia's federal government and the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) escalated sharply on Wednesday, with each side accusing the other of launching offensives and Tigrayan forces taking control of federally run airports across the northern region. Ethiopian Airlines cancelled every flight into Tigray, and residents in the regional capital of Mekelle reported that local forces had taken over the city's airport from the national police before dawn. A drone and fighter jet attack on the southern town of Alamata a day earlier killed at least 14 people and wounded 22 more, according to Tigray's authorities. The rapid unravelling now threatens to reopen a war that ended only four years ago and killed an estimated 600,000 people.

Airports Seized as Flights to Tigray Shut Down

Getachew Reda, a cabinet minister and adviser to Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, said in a statement that Tigrayan fighters had seized federally administered airports in the region and opened offensives in the neighbouring Afar and Amhara regions. He described the move as an "all-out offensive against government positions," launched early Wednesday morning despite months of international mediation aimed at preventing another round of war.

Getachew is a former leader of Tigray's interim administration who broke with the TPLF in 2025 and joined the federal government, making his account of the fighting a direct challenge to the party that runs the region. His defection has been one of the fault lines running through the dispute over how the 2022 peace agreement should be carried out.

Tigray's leadership told a different story. Regional authorities said their forces had been forced into a "defensive war" after days of drone strikes on civilian areas, and accused Addis Ababa of mounting an "open invasion" that violated international humanitarian and human rights law. They said public services and critical infrastructure had been disrupted by the campaign, and urged residents to support the regional forces and stay united.

Deadly Strike on Alamata Reportedly Hit Schools

The strike on Alamata, a town that sits along one of the main roads linking Tigray to the rest of Ethiopia, was the deadliest single incident reported during the current escalation. The town's mayor, Mogos Shiferaw, said more than five drones and one fighter jet carried out more than 21 strikes starting at roughly 3:30 a.m., and that all of those killed and injured were civilians.

Mogos said federal forces targeted two secondary schools on the suspicion that they were being used by Tigrayan forces. He countered that the schools, which had served as federal military bases during the civil war, were empty because the academic year had not yet started. "This caused a lot of psychological trauma in our city and our people were in a state of panic," he said.

The federal government has not commented on the alleged strikes, and the casualty figures and targeting claims have not been independently confirmed. What is not in dispute is the tempo of the collapse: a region that had been slowly rebuilding since 2022 is again bracing for full-scale combat.

A Peace Deal That Never Fully Held

The two-year Tigray war ended in November 2022 with the Pretoria Agreement, an African Union-brokered deal that formally halted one of the deadliest conflicts of this century. The African Union's mediator estimated that some 600,000 people died, and the fighting drove the region to the edge of famine. Nearly four years later, key provisions of that agreement remain unfinished, including disarmament, the return of displaced families, and the fate of contested territory in western Tigray.

On Sunday, the TPLF announced an alliance with six other armed groups inside Ethiopia with the stated goal of removing the government in Addis Ababa. That announcement turned months of mutual accusations into an open contest of force. In July, Abiy told parliament that the TPLF was preparing for renewed conflict. Just before the May general election, which was not held in Tigray because of the security situation, the TPLF restored its pre-war administration and disbanded the interim body Abiy had appointed. There have also been reports of forced recruitment of young men into the regional forces.

It is the same pattern that has strained the U.S.-brokered cease-fire in southern Lebanon, where repeated strikes on both sides have tested a deal that everyone insists still holds. Paper agreements do not survive contact with armed factions that no longer trust the other side to honour them.

What Washington Wants Now

The State Department's Bureau of African Affairs condemned a separate drone strike on Monday that it said targeted a convoy of Catholic vehicles carrying food aid, called for an investigation, and pressed all parties to resolve their differences through dialogue and to take steps to prevent similar incidents. That statement put Washington squarely behind de-escalation at a moment when neither side in the Horn of Africa appears interested in backing down.

The stakes go beyond Tigray. Ethiopia is a major security partner in the Horn of Africa, and renewed civil war would pull attention and resources away from counterterrorism cooperation, Red Sea shipping security, and the fragile network of African Union peace operations that depend on Addis Ababa. A prolonged conflict would also deepen the humanitarian crisis in a region still recovering from the last war, with food distribution already disrupted by the fighting.

Watch three things in the coming days: whether Ethiopian Airlines resumes service to Tigray, a practical signal of who controls the airfields; whether the African Union convenes the guarantors of the Pretoria Agreement to force both sides back to the table; and whether the fighting remains confined to Afar and Amhara or pulls in the other armed movements that signed onto the TPLF's new alliance. Any of those developments would determine whether Wednesday was the opening round of another war or the last push before a negotiated pause.