Field Marshal Berhanu Jula, chief of staff of Ethiopia’s federal army, said Saturday his forces were meeting provocations from the Tigray front with “wisdom and restraint,” breaking his public silence on a week of fighting that has spread from Tigray into the neighboring Afar and Amhara regions and revived fears of a second full-scale civil war.
Jula accused Eritrea of funding and arming the newly formed rebel coalition confronting Addis Ababa, describing the alliance as an extension of what he called a longstanding pattern of hostile groupings that “cannot confront the state without outside backing.” Eritrea has denied the allegation, framing it instead as evidence that landlocked Ethiopia is angling to invade Eritrean territory to secure access to the Red Sea — a suspicion regional analysts say has fed Asmara’s own calculations throughout the current crisis.
ATN, New York has gathered that the fighting traces directly to Sunday’s announcement by seven Ethiopian armed groups, including the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, the Amhara Fano National Movement and the Oromo Liberation Army, that they had formed the Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Alliance for Survival, an explicit coalition aimed at removing Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government. Within days, Tigrayan forces had seized control of three airports in the Tigray region and launched what Abiy adviser Getachew Reda described as an “all-out offensive” against government positions in Afar and Amhara — a characterization TPLF Vice President Amanuel Assefa did not dispute, telling reporters Thursday, “We are in the situation of full-blown war now.”
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The heaviest reported clash so far came in North Wollo, an Amhara zone bordering Tigray, where the federal army said Thursday it had killed 272 Tigrayan fighters and wounded 260 more in a counteroffensive against combined TPLF and Fano forces. Fighting has also continued around Sama, Soqota and the town of Raya Alamata, with government forces reportedly closing in on Alamata itself, while a separate front in Afar has centered on the town of Abala, where the military says it is working to prevent rebel forces from seizing control outright.
Army command has characterized its overall posture as one of “strategic calm” rather than immediate large-scale confrontation, arguing that popular support for the Tigray front is eroding and its leadership divided — an assessment TPLF officials have not directly rebutted, though the group’s continued battlefield gains this week complicate that framing. Analysts tracking the conflict say the TPLF appears to be repeating its strategy from the 2020-2022 war, pushing south through Amhara toward Addis Ababa while the parallel Afar offensive aims to sever supply lines running through Djibouti, the port nation that handles nearly all of Ethiopia’s international trade cargo, including fuel.
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Ethiopia’s federal government retains a significant conventional advantage, fielding an army of roughly 500,000 troops backed by an extensive drone arsenal and support from external partners including the United Arab Emirates. That imbalance has not prevented the conflict from escalating sharply this week, with internet access reportedly cut across northern Ethiopia on Friday, a day after the United Nations said it was alarmed by reports of drones being used against civilian populations in the affected region.
The renewed violence lands at an especially delicate moment for Washington’s Ethiopia policy. The United States lifted sanctions on both Ethiopia and Eritrea earlier this month over atrocities tied to the previous Tigray war, declaring the underlying “national emergency” had expired — a decision that now sits awkwardly alongside a conflict some analysts warn could produce comparable or worse humanitarian consequences. Addressing the UN General Assembly this week, Ethiopia’s president sought to cast the country as a stabilizing regional force, accusing unnamed external actors of meddling in Ethiopian affairs while highlighting Addis Ababa’s role supporting peace efforts in neighboring Sudan.
Alemayehu Weldemariam, a law professor at Indiana University, placed the bulk of responsibility for the 2022 Pretoria Agreement’s collapse squarely on the federal government rather than on Tigrayan actors. “This war has been in the making for a while now. Much of the provisions in the cessation of hostilities were primarily sabotaged by the federal government itself,” he said, pointing to fuel, service and cash restrictions imposed on Tigray and Addis Ababa’s failure to establish the interim regional administration the 2022 deal had promised. “What was supposed to be an interim arrangement turned out to be permanent,” he added, noting Tigray’s continued exclusion from national elections in the years since.
Neither side has signaled openness to a ceasefire as the week’s fighting continues, and no international mediator has yet stepped forward with a framework comparable to the one South Africa brokered in Pretoria three years ago.
