bayu-aji
Ethiopia's top military commander has publicly accused Sudan and Egypt of providing backing to armed groups battling federal troops in the country's northern region, sharply escalating a war of words as fighting between government forces and the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) intensifies for a sixth day.
Field Marshal Birhanu Jula, speaking on the Ethiopian army's official YouTube channel on Sunday, asserted that his forces were confronting organized militias acting in service of foreign interests rather than domestic grievances. He claimed the TPLF and its allies could not have achieved any battlefield gains without being "backed, supported and supplied by Sudan, Egypt and other external powers."
The allegation represents one of the most direct accusations Addis Ababa has leveled at its neighbors since hostilities resumed on Wednesday, and it threatens to widen a conflict that was already drawing in multiple armed factions across Ethiopia's northern periphery.
Sudan's military responded swiftly, issuing a statement on Sunday that dismissed the Ethiopian claim as "baseless." But Khartoum did not stop at a denial. The Sudanese armed forces, which have been locked in a civil war against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) since 2023, counter-accused Ethiopia of allowing its territory to be used to sustain the RSF war effort, alleging that training, supplies and drone operations linked to the paramilitary group were being conducted from inside Ethiopia.
The exchange of accusations underscores how the overlapping conflicts in the Horn of Africa and the Sahel are becoming increasingly entangled, with each side portraying its rival as a proxy for hostile external actors. Neither Ethiopia nor Sudan has provided public evidence to substantiate its claims, and independent verification remains difficult given the communications restrictions in the affected areas.
The renewed TPLF-federal government fighting has revived painful memories of the 2020-2022 civil war, a brutal conflict that is estimated to have killed around 600,000 people and displaced millions before a peace agreement was signed in November 2022. That deal, reached in Pretoria, ended active hostilities and established a transitional framework, but underlying political tensions over Tigray's autonomy, security guarantees and the status of disputed territories were never fully resolved.
The current round of clashes has also produced alarming reports of civilian harm. The headquarters of Tigrai TV, widely regarded as the principal media outlet for the rebel authorities in the regional capital Mekelle, was struck by a drone on Sunday. Ethiopia's federal government had announced last week that the station's operations were suspended indefinitely, though it has not commented on the drone strike itself.
Al Jazeera's Malcolm Webb, reporting from Nairobi, noted that the strike came amid a significant disruption to communications across Tigray. Telecommunications providers reported major outages affecting phone and internet services beginning Friday, making it extraordinarily difficult for journalists and aid agencies to document events on the ground. "We don't know who's causing this communications blackout, if it's the federal government repeating its strategies from the last civil war or if it's TPLF who are trying to prevent electronic communications being used by the federal government to target its drone strikes," Webb said.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is "particularly troubled by reports of the use of drones as well as incidents of harm to civilians," according to his spokesman. No verified casualty figures have been released by either side, and with communications severed, the human toll of the past week remains unclear.
On the battlefield, the TPLF has seized airports and launched offensive operations into the neighboring regions of Afar and Amhara, framing its campaign as a "defensive war" forced upon it by federal aggression. A source told Al Jazeera Arabic that the Ethiopian army had regained control of Alamata, a city in southern Tigray, and was pushing toward Mekhoni and Maychew deeper into the region. AFP reported separately that TPLF fighters captured the town of Erebti in Afar near the Tigray border on Sunday and were advancing toward Afdera, roughly 100 kilometers (60 miles) to the east.
Analysts see a strategic logic in the Afar offensive. The TPLF appears to be reprising a wartime strategy of pressing toward Addis Ababa, but the push through Afar carries a distinct economic objective: cutting supply lines running from Djibouti, the corridor through which the vast majority of Ethiopia's imports, including fuel, enter the country. Severing that route would deliver a crippling blow to the federal government's logistical capacity and to the broader Ethiopian economy, which relies heavily on the Djibouti port for trade.
The TPLF is not fighting alone. Last week it joined six other armed groups to form the Ethiopian Peoples' Forces Alliance for Survival, a coalition aimed at toppling Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's government. The alliance is notable because it brings together longstanding enemies who fought on opposite sides of the 2020-2022 civil war, suggesting that opposition to Abiy has become a more powerful unifying force than old rivalries. The formation of such a broad front signals that the conflict could spread beyond Tigray into other restive regions.
Regional implications are equally serious. Egypt and Sudan have long been at odds with Ethiopia over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile, a mega-project that Cairo and Khartoum fear will reduce their downstream water supplies. Those disputes have never been resolved, and Ethiopia's accusation that both capitals are now backing armed rebels adds a dangerous military dimension to what had been a diplomatic and technical standoff. Egypt has not publicly responded to the allegation.
For ordinary Ethiopians, the return of large-scale fighting represents a devastating reversal. The 2022 peace deal had allowed for a fragile recovery in Tigray, including the restoration of some services and humanitarian access. That progress is now in jeopardy, and the communications blackout is already hampering relief operations in a region where many residents still depend on aid.
The international community's response has so far been limited to expressions of concern. With the African Union, the United Nations and Western powers all distracted by other crises, there is little indication that a new mediation effort is imminent. The risk, observers warn, is that the conflict follows the pattern of the last war: initial skirmishes, escalating offensives, and eventually a full-scale humanitarian catastrophe before any serious negotiations resume.
For now, both Addis Ababa and the TPLF appear committed to military pressure rather than dialogue, and the widening circle of accusations involving Sudan, Egypt and the RSF suggests the conflict's boundaries are becoming harder to contain.
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