Ethiopia’s army takes key Tigray town as war tests Obasanjo’s peace deal

Updated 18:00 WAT, 1 Oct 2026: Ethiopia has closed its embassy in Eritrea and expelled 10 Eritrean diplomats after blasts were heard overnight in Addis Ababa, while pro-government forces claim to have taken Maychew and retaken Erebti.

Updated 10:02 WAT, 1 Oct 2026: A hospital doctor told the BBC that at least 52 civilians were killed in three days of fighting around Alamata, and fighting has since been reported further north towards Mekelle.

Ethiopia’s army and allied militias captured Alamata, the strategic southern gateway into Tigray, on Monday, as the Tigray war that ended in 2022 roared back to life, Reuters reported.

The stakes reach well beyond Ethiopia. The fighting is tearing up the 2022 Pretoria agreement brokered by Nigeria’s former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, and risks dragging in Eritrea, Sudan and Egypt, the three neighbours Addis Ababa now accuses of arming its enemies.

A pro-government militia, the Tigrai Peace Force, posted video of soldiers marching through Alamata waving Ethiopian flags. Reuters could not verify the footage, but two diplomatic sources told the agency the town had fallen.

A source close to the opposition forces said they were pulling back and expected federal troops to hold the town within hours. The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) did not respond to Reuters. The BBC later reported that government troops appeared to have taken control of the town, with social media footage showing army tanks on its streets.

Civilians paid a heavy price. At least 52 were killed in three days of fighting around Alamata between Saturday and Monday, a doctor at Alamata General Hospital told the BBC. They included children as young as three days old, mothers and cattle herders, and 12 people died in a single strike on the town’s marketplace, the BBC reported.

Alamata sits about 120km south of the regional capital, Mekelle, on a major highway. It is a supply hub for troops, food and fuel, and it changed hands several times in the last war.

What is happening in the Tigray war?

Large-scale fighting erupted on 23 September, according to the International Crisis Group. Tigrayan forces seized the airports at Mekelle, Axum and Shire and attacked federal positions in the Amhara and Afar regions.

The TPLF says it is defending itself against a federal offensive involving drones and ground troops, Al Jazeera reported. It now fights inside a seven-group alliance that includes the Amhara Fano movement and the Oromo Liberation Army.

The war may now have reached the capital. Explosions were heard in Addis Ababa overnight from Wednesday into Thursday, three diplomatic sources told Reuters. AFP, citing diplomatic and security sources, reported a blast at the army’s headquarters in the Tor Hayloch area between midnight and 1am, while an intelligence official told the Associated Press there had been three blasts in different locations.

A source in the opposition alliance told Reuters it had carried out several drone strikes, including on the military headquarters. Reuters could not verify the claim, and the government and army did not comment. The blasts came hours after the National Intelligence and Security Service banned drone flights over Addis Ababa and the surrounding area, the AP reported. Officials have given no details of damage or casualties.

Tigrayan fighters took the Afar town of Erebti on Sunday after heavy shelling and pushed towards Afdeera, about 100km east, Euronews reported. That advance may have been reversed: government forces told Reuters on Thursday that they had recaptured Erebti and nearby Abaala, according to Al Jazeera and Arab News. The claim could not be independently verified. At least 150,000 people have been displaced in Afar alone.

That push matters because the road to Djibouti carries the bulk of landlocked Ethiopia’s trade, including fuel. Phone and internet links in Tigray were down for a fourth straight day on Monday, and Ethiopian Airlines has suspended flights to the region, according to Reuters and CNN. Banking services in Tigray have also been suspended, the BBC reported.

Who does Ethiopia blame?

Field Marshal Birhanu Jula, the army chief, accused Egypt, Eritrea and Sudan of backing the rebels. “We are fighting forces that are organised and allied to serve the interests of external forces,” he said, according to Al Jazeera and Euronews.

Sudan’s army called the claim baseless and accused Ethiopia of hosting support for its own enemy, the Rapid Support Forces, Al Jazeera reported. Eritrea also denied the charge, while Egypt did not respond to Reuters.

On Thursday, Addis Ababa turned those accusations into a diplomatic break. The Foreign Ministry said it would close Ethiopia’s embassy in Asmara, citing “direct and indirect acts of hostility and belligerence” by Eritrea, and declared 10 Eritrean diplomats persona non grata, giving them 48 hours to leave, according to the state-affiliated Fana and Reuters. The ministry said the diplomats’ activities threatened Ethiopia’s national security and breached the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.

The embassy had reopened in 2018 after the rapprochement that won Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed the Nobel Peace Prize, Reuters noted. The ministry said Ethiopia remained committed to “the peaceful resolution of disputes”. No immediate Eritrean response had been reported.

Eritrea’s position is the biggest shift. The International Crisis Group says Asmara, once the TPLF’s bitter foe, is now quietly aligned with it, partly out of resentment at being sidelined in the Pretoria deal.

Why does this matter to Nigeria?

Nigeria’s name is written into this peace process. Obasanjo, the African Union’s High Representative for the Horn of Africa, led the talks that produced the Pretoria agreement on 2 November 2022, ending a war that killed an estimated 600,000 people.

On Saturday, a joint UN–AU task force meeting in New York restated its backing for his renewed effort to get both sides back to direct talks, according to the AU’s official communiqué. AU Commission chairperson Mahmoud Ali Youssouf has asked him to re-engage urgently, and UN Secretary-General António Guterres has urged a return to the Pretoria framework.

The problem is trust. In early September, the TPLF said it had not found in Obasanjo “the impartial and proactive mediator required by the gravity of the present crisis”, AFP reported.

A collapse would also weaken the argument, pressed by Nigeria in its campaign for permanent Security Council seats for Africa, that the continent can settle its own wars.

What happens next

In the south, federal troops and their allies are edging towards Mekelle. The pro-government Tigrai Peace Force said on Thursday that it had captured Maychew, about 75km south of the regional capital, alongside the army, Reuters reported. Reuters could not verify the claim, and the TPLF did not comment. Wazema Radio had reported fighting around Mehoni, Maychew and Samre on Wednesday.

In Afar, the government says it has pushed Tigrayan fighters back from Erebti. If that holds, it would ease the threat to the Djibouti road, Ethiopia’s fuel and import lifeline.

Relations with Eritrea are now the other flashpoint. The 10 expelled diplomats have 48 hours to leave, and Abiy is due to be sworn in for a new term on Monday, AFP reported.

No date has been set for fresh talks. The question for the coming days is whether Obasanjo can get both sides into the same room before the fighting spreads further.

Four years after Pretoria, guns are once again deciding who holds Alamata, and the deal Nigeria’s elder statesman brokered is running out of road.