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

Ethiopian federal forces and allied fighters were in control of Mekelle, the capital of Tigray, by Sunday, after the Tigray People's Liberation Front said it had left the city. In a statement posted late on Saturday, the TPLF said it had "temporarily moved out of Mekelle" so that the regional administration could "operate from somewhere else".

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 the Ethiopian military followed. A humanitarian source and a Mekelle resident, both unnamed, told the same agency the city was under government control. A separate humanitarian source told AFP that staff on the ground had seen federal forces and allied fighters at several points in the city, and that the TPLF had abandoned the regional capital. Al Jazeera reported that the airport had been retaken hours before the TPLF statement.

The prime minister's office did not answer a request for comment, Reuters said. The TPLF framed the move as a way to limit further damage in the city and said its forces would keep fighting from other positions.

How the fight restarted

The current round began on 23 September, after seven armed and political groups announced an alliance whose stated aim was to remove Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and set up a transitional administration. That announcement sat on top of a broken 2022 peace deal. The deal had ended the 2020-2022 war between the federal government and Tigrayan forces, a war that killed hundreds of thousands of people, drove millions from their homes, and cut Tigray off from the rest of the country for long stretches.

Mekelle is not a symbolic prize only. It is the seat of the regional administration, the main airport, and the node through which aid, cash and political orders move in northern Ethiopia. Losing it does not end the TPLF as a fighting organisation. It does remove the place from which the group has run Tigray since the peace deal. Reuters described the loss as a major setback for the opposition alliance that had ruled the region.

Neighbours already in the argument

Addis Ababa has accused Eritrea, Sudan and Egypt of backing the opposition coalition. Khartoum and Cairo have denied it. Eritrea, which fought beside the federal army in the 2020-2022 war, cut diplomatic ties with Ethiopia over the accusation. On Sunday, Egypt's President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, speaking before a meeting in El-Alamein with the leaders of Eritrea, Somalia and Sudan, said cross-border problems required dialogue rather than confrontation. He told the African Union's mid-year coordination summit that Egypt opposed foreign interference in African states.

On Saturday the United States urged Ethiopia and Eritrea to respect each other's sovereignty and territorial integrity, to use maximum restraint, and to return to dialogue. The State Department said rising tension could affect the whole region. That warning landed the same weekend the four leaders met in New Alamein and issued a declaration rejecting recognition of Somaliland and any unilateral step on the Nile. The Ethiopian fighting was not the formal subject of that text, but the guest list overlapped with the governments Addis Ababa has named.

What the city has already lived through

The TPLF began as an armed movement against Ethiopia's military government in the 1970s. It later dominated the coalition that ran the country for nearly three decades, until Abiy took office in 2018. Relations collapsed into war in November 2020. Federal forces took Mekelle once before, in late 2020, and the TPLF re-entered it in 2021 after a counter-offensive. Residents who spoke to Al Jazeera on Sunday described the new entry as a return of the same fear: displacement, closed roads, and an economy that had only partly recovered.

No public figure has been given for casualties in the latest push on the city, and no independent count of how many fighters moved in has been published. The useful fact for the next few days is narrower. The group that ran Tigray says it is no longer in the capital, and three separate sources told wire services that government-aligned forces are. Whether that holds depends on whether the TPLF can regroup outside Mekelle, and on whether Eritrea stays out of a war it has already been accused of feeding.