Ethiopian federal troops entered Mekele on Saturday, a humanitarian source told AFP. The capital of Ethiopia's Tigray regional state was largely abandoned earlier by forces of rebel regional authorities.

Published on: 03/10/2026 - 11:33 Modified on: 03/10/2026 - 21:16

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In Ethiopia, federal troops entered Mekele on Saturday October 3, capital of the Ethiopian regional state of Tigray (north), largely abandoned earlier by the forces of the rebel regional authorities whom they have been fighting since September 23, a humanitarian source told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

After months of tension, fighting had resumed in the north of the country, pitting the Ethiopian federal army against the forces of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) – a political group which had de facto ruled Tigray since April – and the Fano militias from the neighboring state of Amhara.

See alsoEthiopia: resumption of fighting, Addis Ababa under tension

In April, the TPLF, which ruled Ethiopia for nearly three decades until 2018, ousted the federally appointed administration from Tigray, once again openly defying the authority of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.

“Ethiopian federal forces and their allies were observed in Mekele (...) in several places” in the city, explained the humanitarian source, citing personnel on site. No fighting was immediately reported, according to this source who requested anonymity and who gave no further details.

Members of the TPLF forces “leaving the city, with their weapons”

In the morning, a local journalist in Mekele told AFP that "the leaders and troops of the TPLF" were leaving the city, as the federal troops who had been advancing in its direction since Monday approached.

Official buildings and police stations are now without surveillance and members of the TPLF forces "are seen leaving the city, with their weapons", described this journalist in a message to AFP. He could not immediately be reached, nor any other source on site, as telecommunications networks have been extremely disrupted in Tigray since the resumption of hostilities, making the little information that filters through difficult to verify.

Neither the spokesperson for the Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF) nor that of Federal Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed immediately responded to requests from AFP.

In a video published Thursday evening, TPLF president Debretsion Gebremichael seemed to acknowledge the setbacks of his troops and advocate a shift towards guerrilla warfare. “Our strategy is to strike the enemy where we want,” he declared, recalling that the TPLF had already driven government forces out of Tigray “in the past” “in eight months”. “We will defeat them again, it is only a matter of time,” he assured.

Concern about seeing the conflict spread

In November 2020, the federal army took Mekele in three weeks during a lightning offensive against the TPLF which it accused of having attacked military camps in Tigray. Entrenched in the mountains, the TPLF, after several months of guerrilla warfare, launched an offensive in June 2021 and recaptured Mekele in ten days, then most of Tigray in a month.

The Tigrayan forces had been stopped by drones around 200 km from Addis Ababa and had retreated to Tigray, subjected for many months to a de facto siege by federal forces. An agreement silenced the guns at the end of 2022, but several key provisions were never implemented, fueling tensions.

Observers are now worried that the conflict will extend beyond Ethiopia, particularly in Eritrea, which borders Tigray to the north, and even Sudan, which shares 700 km of border with Ethiopia to the west.

Will the Ethiopian government now "seek to confine the conflict" in northern Ethiopia "or consider (...) more daring possibilities", such as "targeting Eritrea?", ask Ahmed Soliman and Abel Abate Demissie, researchers at the Chatham House think tank, in a note published Thursday.

A diplomatic source told AFP that a mini-summit would bring together on Sunday the presidents of Egypt, Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, Eritrea, Issaias Afeworki, and Somalia, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, as well as the head of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, in Alamein, Egypt, on the sidelines of an African business forum.

Ethiopia accuses Eritrea, Egypt and the SAF of supporting the TPLF, against a backdrop of regional rivalries in the Horn of Africa, particularly around the Red Sea, a strategic maritime route.

For its part, it is accused of serving as a support platform for the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces that the SAF has been facing since 2023 in Sudan. Egypt considers its large dam on the Nile (Gerd) as an "existential threat" and Somalia takes a dim view of its rapprochement with Somaliland, a region of Somalia self-proclaimed independent since 1991.

With AFP

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