Federal troops retake Alula Aba Nega Airport, 10 km from central Mekelle

Ethiopian National Defence Forces have retaken Alula Aba Nega Airport on the edge of Mekelle, three sources told Reuters on Saturday, ten days after opposition fighters seized it. The airport sits about 10 kilometres, or 6 miles, from the centre of Tigray's capital. It was one of three airfields in the region taken when fighting restarted on 23 September.

Reuters attributed the account to a source with knowledge of events in the city, a humanitarian source, and a Mekelle resident who asked not to be named. The resident said gunfire could be heard outside the city centre, that some Tigrayan Defence Force fighters were leaving their posts and going home, and that government buildings in the city were being looted. A source close to the Tigray People's Liberation Front told Reuters the city was encircled by government troops and allied militias. Reuters said it could not immediately verify the claims. The TPLF could not be reached for comment.

AFP, cited by Al Jazeera, reported a local journalist and residents saying TPLF fighters and leaders were seen leaving the city. That journalist said federal troops had not yet been seen inside Mekelle itself. One resident told AFP they feared government and public property would be looted because no security force was in the city. Another said they wanted law and order back and were afraid for their life. The two pictures, airport taken and city centre still empty of federal troops, can both be true if the force stopped at the airfield.

The airport was a practical target. Mekelle's civilian field is the main air link for a highland city that has been cut off before. In the 2020-2022 war, control of the same airport marked the federal entry into the capital in November 2020 and the TPLF's return in June 2021. Saturday's report does not say the city has fallen. It says the field 10 kilometres out has changed hands, and that a TPLF-linked source described an encirclement.

Addis Ababa severed diplomatic ties with Eritrea this week. The federal government accused Asmara of supporting the rebel alliance together with Sudan and Egypt. All three governments deny that. TPLF leader Debretsion Gebremichael has described the war as a fight over the Red Sea, a claim that puts Eritrea's coast at the centre of the political argument even if Saturday's fighting was at an airport inland.

The current round is the most serious escalation since the Pretoria agreement ended the 2020-2022 war. Pro-government forces had already pushed the TPLF out of the Afar towns of Abala, Erebti and Megale. Al Jazeera's bureau chief in Ethiopia, Mohammed Taha Tawakel, reported on Friday that loyalist forces had taken several towns and were closing on Mekelle. Saturday's airport report is the first specific claim that a Mekelle installation is back in federal hands.

No casualty figure was attached to the airport operation. No official statement from the defence ministry was quoted by Reuters. The gap between a resident seeing fighters abandon posts and a journalist saying federal troops are not yet in the centre is the fact that still has to be closed. If looting of government facilities is underway, as the resident told Reuters, the city is in the interval between one armed presence leaving and another arriving.

What the airport gives the federal side, if the report holds, is a runway inside the Tigray highlands and a symbol that the 23 September seizure has been reversed at one of the three fields. What it does not yet give is control of Mekelle's streets. The next verifiable marker is whether federal or allied forces appear in the centre, and whether the TPLF confirms or denies the encirclement its own linked source described.