Ethiopia’s Tigray Peace Deal Collapses as Fighting Displaces an Estimated 150,000
Renewed fighting in northern Ethiopia has effectively shattered the 2022 peace agreement that ended the Tigray war, with strategic towns changing hands, hundreds of wounded people reaching hospitals and an estimated 150,000 civilians displaced.
The latest combat pits Ethiopia’s federal military and allied forces against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF, and its partners. Fighting has expanded across Tigray and into neighbouring parts of the Amhara and Afar regions.
Reuters reported that federal forces and allied militiamen captured Alamata, a strategically important town approximately 120 kilometres south of the Tigrayan capital, Mekelle. Video published by the pro-government Tigrai Peace Force and verified by Reuters showed soldiers carrying Ethiopian flags through the town.
Two diplomatic sources also told Reuters that Alamata had fallen, while a source linked to opposition forces said they were retreating. Control of the town gives federal forces access to an important route for troops, fuel and food near Tigray’s southern border.
Elsewhere, TPLF fighters reportedly captured Erebti in the Afar region. A commander confirmed the seizure to the Associated Press, while an official from the federal-aligned Tigray Peace Force acknowledged that the town had changed hands but disputed suggestions of heavy fighting there.
The battlefield developments represent more than another isolated confrontation. Reuters described the renewed hostilities as the collapse of the fragile Pretoria Agreement, signed in November 2022 after a two-year war between the federal government and Tigrayan forces.
The humanitarian consequences are already emerging. Médecins Sans Frontières said the number of war-wounded patients received by hospitals in Korem and Alamata increased from around 180 to more than 420 during a 48-hour period between September 22 and 25.
More than 300 additional war-wounded patients reached Suhul Hospital in Shire by September 25. MSF subsequently suspended its activities at Alamata Hospital and halted outreach programmes because of insecurity, redirecting personnel to facilities facing increased casualties.
Valerie Browning, co-founder of the Afar Pastoralist Development Association, told the Associated Press that approximately 150,000 people had been displaced. That figure is a field estimate attributed to one humanitarian organisation and has not yet been confirmed through a consolidated national or United Nations assessment.
Communication disruptions are making independent assessment more difficult. Internet and telephone networks in Tigray remained unavailable for a fourth day, according to Reuters. Sources told the news agency that the TPLF had ordered the shutdown, but the group had not publicly responded to that allegation.
Flights have also been disrupted, while the International Committee of the Red Cross said it evacuated 161 people from Mekelle to Semera in Afar. The group included African Union monitors, Ethiopian federal police, Ethiopian Airlines employees and Red Cross personnel.
The crisis is becoming increasingly regional. Ethiopian military chief Field Marshal Birhanu Jula accused Eritrea of mobilising financial support for the TPLF and suggested that Sudan and Egypt were also assisting opposition forces.
Eritrea and Sudan’s military denied the accusations. Egypt’s foreign ministry told Reuters that Cairo respects the sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity of states and rejects actions that could undermine regional stability.
The allegations remain unproven. They should not be reported as confirmed foreign intervention without supporting evidence. However, their public circulation by Ethiopia’s senior military leadership signals the extent to which the conflict is becoming entangled with wider disputes in the Horn of Africa.
Relations between Ethiopia and Eritrea have deteriorated amid Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s push for sovereign access to the Red Sea, including the Eritrean port of Assab. Ethiopia’s agreements and negotiations concerning Somaliland have also strained its relationship with Somalia, while Sudan’s civil war has created additional tensions along Ethiopia’s western frontier.
Eritrean troops previously fought alongside Ethiopian federal forces against the TPLF during the 2020–2022 conflict. The current accusations therefore mark a significant reversal in regional alignments.
The earlier war devastated Tigray and other parts of northern Ethiopia. An estimate by Ghent University researchers cited by AP placed the civilian toll at about 500,000, including deaths caused by violence, famine and the collapse of healthcare. Precise totals remain contested, but the conflict is widely regarded as one of Africa’s deadliest in recent decades.
The Pretoria Agreement stopped much of the large-scale fighting but left critical issues unresolved, including territorial disputes, the presence of outside forces, disarmament and political authority within Tigray.
The TPLF and the federal government have since accused each other of violating the agreement. Days before its latest offensive, the TPLF announced an alliance with six other armed organisations that declared an objective of removing Abiy’s government.
International efforts must now address two immediate dangers. The first is a return to the siege-like humanitarian conditions experienced during the previous war, when food, medicine, banking and communications were severely restricted. The second is a broader confrontation involving neighbouring governments and armed movements across the Horn of Africa.
The capture of Alamata does not determine the outcome of the conflict, and territorial control may change rapidly. What is already clear is that the political framework that contained the war for almost four years is no longer functioning.
Without an immediate ceasefire and renewed African Union-backed negotiations, Ethiopia risks returning to a conflict whose human cost the country and the wider region have not yet recovered from.
