Since Friday, Tigray has once again been cut off from the outside world. Phone and internet networks stopped working across the region, on both the state-owned Ethio Telecom and its private rival Safaricom. The monitoring group NetBlocks confirmed an internet disruption in northern Ethiopia. It is still unclear who caused it. Four sources quoted by Reuters, including a diplomat, said the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) had ordered both operators to shut down their networks. One of them saw it as a way to deny the federal army the use of its drones, which rely partly on the mobile network. The TPLF rejects the accusation and blames the government.
The blackout comes as fighting has spread since Tuesday across three regions: Tigray, Afar and Amhara. There is fighting around Abala, in the mountains between Afar and Tigray, at May Gaba and Tselimo in western Tigray, and in North Wollo as far as Kobo and Lalibela. The airport of Lalibela, a UNESCO World Heritage site, has been closed. Tigrayan forces say they have seized three local airports. « We are in the situation of full-blown war now, » TPLF vice president Amanuel Assefa told AFP.
The federal army’s death tolls rise every day. On Thursday, its Northeast Command said it had killed 272 Tigrayan fighters and wounded 260 in North Wollo. On Friday, it reported another 436 killed, 220 wounded and 44 captured. According to AFP, the military now claims more than 700 rebels killed since Tuesday. It has released no figures for its own losses or for civilian casualties, and none of these numbers could be independently verified.
The TPLF is no longer fighting alone. A few days before the escalation, seven armed groups formed the Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Alliance for Survival, with the stated aim of toppling Abiy Ahmed’s government. Alongside the Tigrayans are the Amhara Fano militias, the Oromo Liberation Army and movements from the Somali, Afar and Benishangul-Gumuz regions. In Afar, the offensive appears aimed at the road to Djibouti, which carries almost all of the country’s foreign trade and fuel imports. At the United Nations, President Taye Atske-Selassie denounced « forces of destruction » and foreign interference. Addis Ababa accuses Eritrea of backing the TPLF, which Asmara denies.
In Tigray, many young men are not waiting to be conscripted. Human rights groups and residents accuse the TPLF of forcibly recruiting for months. Human Rights Watch has documented cases involving children as young as 15 and civilians taken from the street, their homes, their workplaces or mining sites. A mobilisation proclamation adopted in June now makes desertion a crime, along with any help a family gives to it. In Maichew, a resident says fighters are still going from house to house looking for young men. Gebru, 27, was taken with others to a local administration office. His parents paid 20,000 birr, about 123 dollars, to get him released, and he then fled to Addis Ababa. Shewit, 24, was studying at Mekelle University and teaching language classes. He left everything behind to reach the capital. TPLF spokesman Michael Asgedom insists that young people join voluntarily and calls that account « mistaken. »
People in the region mostly fear a repeat of the last war. Between 2020 and 2022, that conflict killed around 600,000 people, largely because of the blockade and isolation imposed on the region. The Pretoria Agreement, signed in November 2022, ended the fighting but left the core issues unresolved: disarming Tigrayan forces, the status of western Tigray occupied by Amhara militias and the return of displaced people. In March 2025, Debretsion Gebremichael’s faction took back power in Mekelle by ousting Getachew Reda, which widened the rift with Addis Ababa. Today, residents are stockpiling supplies, withdrawing cash and buying backup SIM cards. Clionadh Raleigh of the conflict monitor ACLED does not expect a quick return to low-intensity conflict.