Africa24 September, 20263 min read
Ethiopian Army Repels Attack Near Abera as Tigray People’s Liberation Front Declares Total War
This article is an automated aggregation of coverage from news outlets. Our editorials offer in-depth analysis curated by the NewsCord team.
TPLF declares total war against the Ethiopian government, intensifying clashes in Tigray, Amhara, Afar. TPLF forces seize Mekelle, Axum, and Shire airports, prompting Ethiopian Airlines to suspend flights.
Internet outage and clashes
NetBlocks detected a network outage in northern Ethiopia on Friday, and the monitoring group said the disruption coincided with intensified fighting between federal forces and fighters of the Tigray People's Liberation Front and its allies. A source in exile from Tigray told Reuters that he could not contact people in the region, and the source said acquaintances in Addis Ababa also faced difficulties reaching their relatives there. Federal forces fought to repel an attack on the town of Abera in the Amhara region, and the account said the army used a drone to defend Abera, which sits in a mountainous area on the border between Amhara and Tigray.
Local sources told Reuters that air travel to Lalibela was suspended yesterday due to fighting around it, and the fighting also hit the northern area of Welk in the Amhara region around sites listed by UNESCO as World Heritage in Lalibela. The Ethiopian army announced the death of 272 TPLF fighters and the injury of 260 others in recent clashes in the north of the country.
Afar front and airport seizures
Fighting erupted overnight from September 24 into September 25 in Abala, Afar, as Ethiopian federal forces battled TPLF-aligned Tigray fighters near the strategically important town along the Tigray-Afar border. A humanitarian source in the area told AFP that Ethiopian federal forces fought overnight to prevent TPLF-aligned fighters from entering Abala, and the source said federal forces prevented the fighters from entering the town. The account said the Ethiopian military used a drone during the fighting, and Kulu Media could not independently verify the battlefield account or the reported use of a drone.
Ethiopian Airlines suspended all scheduled flights to Tigray on September 23 after TPLF-aligned forces took control of the airports in Mekelle, Axum and Shire, and the disruption added another layer of uncertainty for verifying developments inside Tigray. The conflict also spread into other fronts, with the Ethiopian National Defense Force saying Thursday that 272 Tigrayan fighters were killed during fighting in North Wollo and another 260 were wounded.
De-escalation calls and risks
The African Union called for an immediate de-escalation in northern Ethiopia on Wednesday, and the AU Commission chair Mahmoud Ali Youssouf pointed to the seizure of Mekelle, Axum, and Shire airports by Tigray forces. Youssouf also urged resumption of direct talks within the Pretoria agreement, and he said the seizure of air terminals contradicts the pact’s obligations and threatens progress achieved since 2022. News Digitales said the Pretoria agreement is limited to ordering a ceasefire and includes protection of civilians, humanitarian access, restoration of services, and disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration.
UNHCR recorded in its May 2026 report, based on the latest available IOM-DTM from August 2024, 749,509 internally displaced people in Tigray and 1,120,483 returns, and the article said the immediate cost falls on a population still living between return and displacement. The next test, News Digitales said, will be whether the parties return to the negotiating table before the crisis spreads, and Youssouf asked former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, the African Union’s envoy for the Horn of Africa, to reach out to the actors.