After four years of a contentious peace between the Ethiopian federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, fighting broke out between the two sides on Saturday.
The clashes spanned from the Humera border town with Sudan in the north to Shererina in the south and began around midnight, persisting through the afternoon of the next day, three residents in the area told Mada Masr.
The residents said they could hear the sound of mortar shelling and machine gun fire throughout the day, primarily around Shererina.
The clashes began when a force of Tigrayian fighters, who have been stationed in Sudan, crossed into Ethiopia near the village of Legudi outside Humera, according to an Ethiopian military source.
Residents of the border area told Mada Masr that the force, known as “Army 70,” displaced farmers and looted properties belonging to eight agricultural investors, forcing them to flee to urban centers.
The Tigrayan force was quickly engaged by the Ethiopian federal military and pushed back, according to the Ethiopian military source.
Shortly afterward, federal forces launched attacks on TPLF positions in Shererina using heavy artillery and drones, according to the group’s leadership, which described the assault as a direct violation of the Pretoria ceasefire agreement, the 2022 peace deal that ended the two-year civil war in Tigray.
The Ethiopian military has established new checkpoints at main access gates to Humera city, imposing strict security controls and movement restrictions, the Ethiopian military source said. All vehicular and pedestrian movement outside city limits has been prohibited, effectively barring farmers from accessing surrounding agricultural fields.
In southern Tigray, tensions also flared, as eyewitnesses told Mada Masr that a military build-up was visible.
Fearing a broader conflict, hundreds of civilians from surrounding areas fled on foot toward Raya Kobo, quickly overwhelming local hosting capacities and driving further displacement south toward Woldiya and Dessie, Gobeze Aragaw, a resident of Kobo, told Mada Masr.
The clashes are an ominous sign of escalation for a region that has been on the brink of war for months.
While tensions have been steadily escalating between Tigray and the federal government for at least a year following the collapse of the Tigray Interim Administration established under the 2022 agreement, the fighting has a wider resonance.
Ethiopia’s decision to allow the Rapid Support Forces to use its territory as a staging ground for fighting in Sudan’s Blue Nile coupled with its demands for Red Sea access via Eritrea, which has subsequently thrown its weight behind the TPLF, has internationalized the stakes of the Tigray tension. Egypt, adamant in denying Ethiopia Red Sea access, has grown closer to Eritrea, while the United Arab Emirates, a close backer of the RSF and the Ethiopian government, looms in the background.
For now, however, the conflict has largely remained localized.
The TPLF said on Saturday that its forces were acting “in defense of the region” after what it described as government attempts to impose new military realities on the ground. It accused Addis Ababa of failing to implement key provisions of the agreement, including the withdrawal of non-federal forces from Western Tigray and the restoration of civilian administration in the territory.
A former Ethiopian government official who served at the country’s embassy in Khartoum said the federal government holds the TPLF leadership entirely responsible for the collapse of the security arrangements, arguing that the group has spent recent months rebuilding its military structures outside the framework established by the Pretoria agreement.
The Ethiopian military operations are intended to “protect the constitutional order” and prevent the peace deal from collapsing, the former official said. The government, they stressed, continues to affirm its commitment to the agreement, but it believes preserving it requires preventing any renewed military mobilization inside Tigray.
Ethiopia’s prime minister has, however, increasingly driven a hard line in national politics, engineering an election cycle in which his Prosperity Party dominated the vote, amid widespread violations, the exclusion of all Tigray voting districts and active fighting in Amhara, which is the site of an active insurgency.
The escalation has brought unresolved issues from the Pretoria agreement back to the fore, chief among them the future of Western Tigray, the integration of local armed forces, the redeployment of the federal military and the continued presence of Amhara regional forces in parts of the disputed territory.
The agreement succeeded in ending large-scale war but failed to address the root causes of the conflict, leaving the region in a state of “fragile peace” that could unravel with any shift in the balance of power, a source in the Intergovernmental Authority on Development told Mada Masr.
The current fighting, the source added, represents the agreement’s most dangerous test on the ground and could determine its future if military operations expand.
Shererina’s importance extends beyond its domestic military significance. The town sits on one of the main corridors linking Western Tigray with the Sudanese and Eritrean borders. During the Tigray war, which took place between 2020 and 2022, it became a key route for Ethiopian and Eritrean troop movements and one of the main routes for civilians displaced into Sudan, particularly to the Gadarif and Kassala states. It is also a logistical node controlling access to Humera and Western Tigray, areas that have remained at the center of a dispute between the Tigray administration and the Amhara authorities even after the peace agreement.
According to a Sudanese military source, the military views developments in Shererina as having direct implications for Sudan’s national security, given that its border with Ethiopia, longer than 700 km, has become part of the armed forces’ operational calculations since Sudan’s war began.
The sensitivity of the border has grown significantly over the past months as Sudan’s war came to the Blue Nile. Sudanese military and security sources repeatedly told Mada Masr that they had tracked RSF fighters and their allies in Ethiopian territory, either in training camps or assembling before crossing into Sudan to launch attacks. The March capture of Blue Nile’s Kurmuk by the RSF, a turning point along the eastern front, was carried out by thousands of fighters advancing from Ethiopia’s northwestern Benishangul-Gumuz region, according to military sources.
Sudanese officials have also been closely watching Ethiopia’s own military posture within the same region. Construction of a major military base in Benishangul-Gumuz has accelerated earlier this year, accompanied by large deployments of troops and weapons, Sudanese intelligence and security sources told Mada Masr in January.
The military leadership is monitoring the current situation “with a high level of readiness,” while reinforcing deployments at border crossings and checkpoints in anticipation of any security fallout should the fighting spread, the Sudanese military source added.
The renewed fighting also comes as the Sudanese military is conducting major operations in Kordofan and Blue Nile, making stability along its eastern border an operational priority. A senior Sudanese security official in the eastern sector said a new war in Tigray would present an additional challenge at a time when the military is already stretched across multiple fronts.
In Blue Nile, where Sudan borders Ethiopia’s Benishangul-Gumuz region, Sudanese security agencies are also watching developments closely for their potential impact on Ethiopian troop deployments along the border. A security official in Blue Nile said the Ethiopian military’s involvement in a new attrition front in Tigray could force it to redeploy forces from parts of its western and border regions, altering patterns of security presence along the Sudanese border.
Sudan’s military does not expect an immediate shift in Blue Nile’s battlefield, but it is nevertheless preparing for an increase in irregular cross-border movement if fighting drags on, the security official said.
For years, Sudan’s eastern borders served as a corridor for migrants, informal trade and the smuggling of goods and weapons. Sudanese security officials believe that another collapse in Tigray could recreate the conditions seen during the war, when tens of thousands of Ethiopians crossed into Sudan within a short span — a scenario that would unfold as the country is already grappling with the largest internal displacement crisis in its history.
The proximity to Ethiopia alongside souring relations with the government in Addis Ababa has also meant that Sudan has increased its relationship with Tigrayan fighters.
Operating from Sudan, Army 70 is made up of thousands of fighters and officers of Tigrayan origin who once served in Ethiopia’s federal armed forces before defecting or fleeing into Sudan after the outbreak of the Tigray war, a Sudanese source informed of the fighters movements said.
That is a cause of concern for the Ethiopian federal military, the source added, because unlike TPLF-affiliated militias or volunteer fighters, Army 70’s members are professionally trained with extensive operational experience gained during their previous military service, making the group more seasoned, organized and disciplined.
The group is now operating as a pressure and combat force along the Sudan-Ethiopia border, particularly in the disputed western territories, the source said.
The Ethiopia military source told Mada Masr that Army 70 has been fighting alongside the Sudanese military and it is Sudan who supplies it with weaponry.
On the eastern border is another potential faultline should the clashes expand.
Eritrea, one of the Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s closest military allies during the Tigray war, is approaching the latest development with great caution.
Asmara’s relationship with Addis Ababa has significantly shifted over the past two years. The two governments have increasingly diverged over the implementation of the Pretoria agreement, the future security order in northern Ethiopia and Addis Ababa’s broader regional ambitions, including its pursuit of access to the Red Sea.
Now, the Eritrean leadership is closely monitoring the escalation in Shererina, a media source in Asmara said.
The hostility between Asmara and the TPLF dates back to the Eritrea-Ethiopia border war that took place between 1998 and 2000, when the TPLF dominated Ethiopia’s government. Since then, Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki has regarded weakening the group as a long-term strategic objective.
Eritrean forces participated directly in the 2020 war on the side of the federal forces, viewing the alliance with Abiy as an opportunity to end the TPLF’s military and political influence along Eritrea’s southern border.
But the current situation is different, the Eritrean source said. Rising tensions between Asmara and Addis Ababa over Ethiopia’s demand for access to the Red Sea via Eritrea have prompted parts of Eritrea’s decision-making circles to reassess their security priorities. The TPLF is no longer viewed as the country’s sole threat, amid growing concern over the Ethiopian federal government’s regional policies, the source added.
This shift has opened the door to a more pragmatic approach aimed at preventing either side from securing a decisive advantage that could upset the balance of power along the border, according to the source. It also explains why Eritrea has so far refrained from issuing an official position or becoming directly involved in the fighting, even as it maintains a state of military alert along the border in anticipation of further field developments, the source said.
A diplomat based at the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa said that the latest escalation threatens not only the Pretoria agreement, but also risks plunging the Horn of Africa into a new period of uncertainty, as the region simultaneously contends with crises in Sudan, Somalia and the Red Sea.
Any expansion of the fighting would have an impact on the calculations of every regional actor, the diplomat added, because the borders linking Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea are no longer merely dividing lines between states. They now form part of an interconnected regional security system in which domestic wars and geopolitical interests overlap, making any new outbreak of fighting in Tigray a potential factor in reshaping the security landscape of the entire East African region.
William Davidson, Ethiopia Insight managing editor and an independent analyst, shares the concern over the potential for a widening conflict.
“Although it does not seem to have escalated into a wider conflict, this flare-up demonstrates again that the situation is highly volatile,” he told Mada Masr. “Given it occurred near areas disputed by Amhara and Tigray and involved a unit of the Tigrayan army that has been active in Sudan, it indicates that if a new war did occur, it would not just involve Tigrayan and federal forces.”
The post Clashes in Ethiopia along borders with Sudan, Eritrea stoke worry of larger regional war first appeared on Mada Masr .
Clashes in Ethiopia along borders with Sudan, Eritrea stoke worry of larger regional war
Aggregated summary from an independent source. Read the original at MadaMasr.