Tigrayan Forces Seize Three Airports as Ethiopia's Northern War Reignites

Ethiopia's northern war has reignited. In the span of four days, Tigrayan forces and a newly formed coalition of seven armed movements seized three regional airports, launched offensives across three states, and drew federal drone strikes that hit a food-aid convoy and at least five schools, shattering a peace agreement that had held, uneasily, for nearly four years.

The fighting, which erupted on September 22 and has since spread through Tigray, Amhara and Afar, is the most serious escalation since Ethiopia's federal government and the Tigray People's Liberation Front signed the Pretoria Agreement in November 2022, ending a two-year civil war that killed an estimated 600,000 people. The renewed violence has raised fears of a return to a conflict that produced some of the deadliest fighting and worst famine conditions anywhere in the world this decade.

What happened

On the morning of September 23, Tigray Defense Forces units seized the airports at Mekelle, the regional capital, along with Axum and Shire, forcing Ethiopian Airlines to cancel flights across the region, according to reporting on the airport takeovers. The offensive came a day after Ethiopian drones and a fighter jet struck two secondary schools in the town of Alamata before dawn, an attack the town's mayor said killed at least 14 civilians and wounded 22 more, all of them noncombatants, since the school year had not yet begun and the buildings were empty of students.

The Tigray People's Liberation Front, the region's dominant political and military force, described the school strikes as an "open invasion" and declared what it called a defensive war in response. Federal officials countered that the TPLF had launched an unprovoked, all-out offensive against government positions in Afar and Amhara before seizing the airports, and an adviser to Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed accused the TPLF leadership of "irresponsibility." Fighting has since spread along the Tigray-Amhara and Tigray-Afar borders, with the Amhara-based Fano militia — once a bitter rival of the TPLF — now fighting alongside Tigrayan forces under a new seven-group coalition that calls itself the Alliance for Survival and says it aims to remove Abiy's government.

The numbers

Ethiopia's military says its forces killed 272 fighters aligned with the TPLF and wounded 260 more in a counteroffensive, though the claim could not be independently verified and Tigrayan officials have not confirmed comparable losses on the government side. Beyond the battlefield tolls, the United Nations says it is tracking a fast-moving humanitarian emergency: a drone strike hit a truck delivering food aid to displaced people in northwestern Tigray, a mortar strike in Kobo, in Amhara, killed civilians on September 24, and five schools across Tigray were struck in a single day, according to an account from the UN's news service. Roughly 750,000 people were already displaced in Tigray from the earlier war, a toll the new fighting threatens to add to. Internet and phone service has been largely cut across the region.

How the truce collapsed

The Pretoria Agreement ended the 2020-2022 war on paper, but it left the core disputes that caused it unresolved: the status of western Tigray, the return of displaced people, and the disarmament of Tigrayan forces. Those grievances deepened after a factional split inside the TPLF itself, and Amhara's Fano militia — which had briefly fought alongside federal forces against Tigray — turned against Addis Ababa in 2023 over the same territorial disputes. Relations between Prime Minister Abiy and Eritrea's president, Isaias Afwerki, have also curdled since the war ended, and analysts say that estrangement has made an alliance with Tigray a more attractive option for Asmara, which has long been wary of Ethiopian ambitions toward the Red Sea coast. Ethiopian officials have accused the rebels of seeking Eritrean backing; Eritrea denies involvement. On September 20, seven armed groups spanning Tigray, Amhara, Oromia, the Somali region and Benishangul-Gumuz announced they had formed the Alliance for Survival, a coalition that gave the following days' offensive a scale and coordination the government had not faced before.

Who is affected

Civilians across the three affected regions are bearing the brunt. The closure of Mekelle, Axum and Shire airports has cut off commercial air links to Tigray entirely, complicating both aid delivery and the movement of people trying to flee combat zones. Aid groups already contending with 750,000 displaced people from the earlier war now face new displacement in Amhara and Afar as well, at a time when armed groups have seized humanitarian vehicles and closed roads that relief convoys depend on. Students have been swept into the toll directly: the schools hit in Alamata were struck, the local mayor said, on suspicion they were being used by Tigrayan forces, though they stood empty when the strikes occurred. Rights monitors warn the danger to civilians will only grow if fighting continues to widen.

"The new hostilities in northern Ethiopia raise fears that civilians will face further abuses given the warring parties' past atrocities and ongoing impunity," said Laetitia Bader of Human Rights Watch, in a statement urging protections for civilians.

Reaction

The response from international bodies has been swift and alarmed. UN Secretary-General António Guterres said he was "gravely concerned" about the seizure of the three airports and the spread of hostilities, and called on all parties to exercise maximum restraint, protect civilians and preserve humanitarian access. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said separately that he was "deeply alarmed by the escalation" and urged the sides to step back from a full-scale return to war. The African Union Commission's chairperson, Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, said the bloc was gravely concerned about the "seizure and occupation" of the airports and the detention of federal personnel, and he asked former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo — who brokered the original Pretoria talks — to re-engage both sides urgently. The regional body IGAD likewise warned that a return to widespread conflict would carry grave consequences for Ethiopia and the wider Horn of Africa, insisting the Pretoria framework remains the only legitimate path to resolving the dispute. Within Ethiopia, the divide is stark: a TPLF vice president declared "we are in the situation of full-blown war now," while a government adviser dismissed the odds of the new rebel coalition succeeding.

What happens next

Diplomats are racing to reopen the channel that produced the 2022 truce before the fighting hardens into another prolonged war. Obasanjo's renewed engagement, backed by the African Union and the United Nations' special envoy for the Horn of Africa, offers the most immediate off-ramp, but neither side has signaled a readiness to stand down: the Alliance for Survival says its offensive is defensive and ongoing, while Addis Ababa has continued drone strikes and claimed battlefield gains. Analysts tracking the crisis, including in a detailed assessment of the coalition's reach, note that the rebel alliance's geographic span — from Tigray to Oromia to the Somali region — makes this look less like a localized border dispute than the opening phase of a broader challenge to Abiy's government. With Eritrea's intentions unclear and Sudan's own civil war destabilizing the wider neighborhood, the coming days are likely to determine whether this remains a contained flare-up in the north or grows into the second major war the Horn of Africa has fought this decade.