The fragile truce that had held since the Pretoria agreement has just given way. On September 24, Ethiopia’s federal army launched a counter-offensive against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front and its allies in North Wollo, an Amhara region bordering Tigray. According to the military command, the operation killed 272 fighters, wounded 260 and led to the capture of several others. The TPLF disputes that toll without offering a figure of its own.
The fighting is no longer a border skirmish. The movement’s vice president, Amanuel Assefa, now describes a « full-blown war, » fought jointly with armed groups present in Afar and Amhara. This alliance, named the Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Alliance for Survival, was reportedly sealed five days before hostilities resumed. Some sources put its membership at seven groups: alongside the TPLF, the Amhara Fano movement, the Oromo Liberation Army, the Ogaden National Liberation Front, and armed formations from Afar, Benishangul and Gumuz. Its stated goal leaves little room for ambiguity: to remove Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government and install a transition.
On the ground, Tigrayan forces claim to have seized three airports, at Mekelle, Axum and Shire, an advance that has cut off air access to Lalibela, the UNESCO-listed site located in Amhara territory. Getachew Reda, a former TPLF official now advising Abiy Ahmed, accuses the coalition of starting this week’s fighting, a version Mekelle had already rejected during a similar episode in August.
Addressing the UN General Assembly, President Taye Atske Selassie chose a broader register, denouncing « reckless and repeat-offending external actors, » while also touching on the persisting tensions with Eritrea over border and security issues, and with Egypt over the sharing of the Nile’s waters and the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Several analysts suspect Asmara of quietly backing the TPLF, fearing that Addis Ababa might use a military win to secure access to the Red Sea.
The African Union, which brokered and guarantees the 2022 Pretoria agreement, has so far responded neither to the resumption of fighting nor to the formation of a coalition seemingly bent on threatening the order it helped establish. That agreement, according to several observers, mainly froze the thorniest questions, disarmament and the political reintegration of former belligerents, without ever truly resolving them. The previous war, from 2020 to 2022, killed an estimated 600,000 people, a toll worsened by a communications and supply blockade that plunged parts of the region into famine. The same levers, cut communications, seized airports, controlled roads, are back in play today, and none of the parties fighting has explained why this round would end any differently.