Federal forces enter Mekelle after the TPLF says it has left the city

Ethiopian federal forces and allied fighters were in control of Mekelle by Sunday, after the Tigray People's Liberation Front said it had pulled its administration out of the regional capital. The loss of the city, confirmed by a militia source, a humanitarian worker and a resident to Reuters, is the sharpest setback yet for the opposition alliance that opened an offensive against Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on 23 September.

The TPLF posted the withdrawal late on Saturday. It said it had temporarily moved out of Mekelle so that it could operate from somewhere else. In a later wording carried by Al Jazeera, the group said the regional government would operate from another location, and that the move was meant to limit further destruction in the city. It did not name the new seat. It also said its forces would keep fighting from other positions.

The sequence inside the city is narrower than the political claim. A source close to the Tigray Peace Forces, a pro-government militia, told Reuters that its fighters entered the centre of Mekelle on Saturday afternoon, and that Ethiopian troops followed. Federal forces and allied fighters had already retaken the main airport. A humanitarian source told AFP that staff on the ground reported the TPLF had left the capital, and that federal and allied forces had been seen across several parts of the city. Abiy's office did not answer a Reuters request for comment on Sunday.

Mekelle is the administrative centre of Tigray, the site of the regional airport, and the place from which the TPLF has run the region since the 2022 cessation of hostilities. Losing it splits the political leadership from the city's services, banks and roads. A government that says it has only relocated still has to show where salaries, permits and police orders will be issued. The TPLF has not done that yet.

The September offensive was announced by seven armed and political groups. Their stated aim was to remove Abiy and put in place a transitional administration they described as inclusive. Fighting began on 23 September. By the first weekend of October the federal side had the airport and then the city centre. That is a fast reversal for an alliance that opened the campaign by trying to seize the initiative in the north.

The last time Mekelle changed hands, the cost was counted in years. The 2020-2022 war between the federal government and Tigray forces killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions, and it cut much of the region off from banking, telecoms and aid. The November 2022 Pretoria agreement was supposed to end that. It did not settle who commands Tigray's security forces, or how the TPLF would sit inside a federal order that had already stripped it of its old legal status. The new fighting is what that unfinished settlement looks like once both sides decide the paper no longer holds.

Residents who spoke to reporters asked not to be named. A city that has just changed hands is a poor place to be quoted. Al Jazeera's Monday account, filed from Addis Ababa, said the capture had revived fear of another long displacement. No fresh count of people leaving Mekelle has been published. Aid agencies that tracked movement in 2021 and 2022 have not yet put a figure on this weekend.

A capital can be left without a front collapsing. The group said it would operate from somewhere else and continue the conflict. If that somewhere else has an airstrip, a road to the Eritrean border, or a store of fuel, the war continues as a rural campaign. If it does not, the 23 September alliance has lost the only city large enough to look like a government.

The airport is the practical hinge. Whoever holds it decides whether aid flights, officials and ammunition can land without a road convoy. Federal forces took it before they took the centre. That order suggests the city was entered after the air link was already cut, which fits the TPLF's decision to leave rather than fight street by street.

Abiy's silence on Sunday leaves the federal claim resting on the militia source and the two unnamed confirmations. That is enough to report control of the city. It is not enough to describe terms. No curfew text, no list of detained officials, and no statement on whether the Tigray interim institutions set up after Pretoria will be restored have been published. Those documents will show whether Saturday was a change of garrison or a change of rule.

For Addis Ababa, the weekend answers a narrower question than the war. It shows that the alliance cannot hold Tigray's capital against the federal army and the Tigray Peace Forces together. It does not show that the offensive of 23 September is over. The TPLF's own text keeps the fight open, and it keeps the administration in motion. Until a named town replaces Mekelle on a letterhead, the region has a capital in federal hands and a government that says it is somewhere else.