Eritrean forces cross into Tigray, drawing Ethiopian drone strikes

Cross-border incursion revives fears of wider Horn of Africa war

Eritrean soldiers in military vehicles crossed from Eritrea into Ethiopia’s Tigray region on Wednesday, reaching the town of Adigrat about 25 miles (40 kilometers) inside Ethiopian territory, the conflict monitoring group Acled, civilian witnesses and a militia commander reported. Ethiopian government forces then struck the Eritrean troops with drones on Wednesday evening and again on Thursday morning, according to Acled.

The cross-border incursion comes amid a multi-front military campaign in northern Ethiopia in which the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF, and six other armed groups have fought the federal government in Tigray, Amhara and Afar since 23 September. Ethiopia’s military pushed back, and an allied militia known as the Tigray Peace Force took over Tigray’s regional capital, Mekelle, on 4 October after the TPLF withdrew from the city.

Eritrea’s information minister, Yemane Ghebremeskel, did not explicitly confirm or deny the presence of Eritrean troops in Ethiopia. “We are not in the business of refuting wild allegations or narratives,” he said in a statement.

Ethiopia’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Monday that the country “stands ready to defend its sovereignty, territorial integrity, and core national interests, while urging all regional actors to address shared challenges through constructive dialogue, partnership, and adherence to the principles of good neighbourliness rather than confrontation and zero-sum approaches.”

The TPLF and Ethiopia’s federal government fought a civil war from 2020 to 2022 in which between 300,000 and 800,000 civilians died, according to British government estimates. Both sides and their allies were accused of war crimes. Eritrea intervened on the side of Ethiopia in that conflict, after a rapprochement between the two countries in 2018 that earned Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize.

The Guardian’s reporting frames the Eritrean incursion as a preemptive response to a perceived Ethiopian invasion risk rather than support for the TPLF. Eritrea has a historical enmity with the TPLF, which launched an offensive against the Ethiopian federal government on 23 September. That previous hostility, the Guardian reported, has been superseded by Eritrea’s desire to head off a perceived risk of Ethiopia invading it in order to access the Red Sea.

Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia in 1993. The two countries fought a separate war from 1998 to 2000, and the TPLF ruled Ethiopia from 1991 to 2018. Relations between the two governments have deteriorated again in recent years. Abiy has said Ethiopia needs access to the Red Sea, and Ethiopian state media has claimed the country has historical rights to the Eritrean port of Assab. The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran — which has led Iran to limit shipping through the Strait of Hormuz — has further raised the stakes of Red Sea access.

In its Monday statement, Ethiopia’s foreign ministry said: “Any serious discussion of regional maritime affairs and security architecture must account for Ethiopia’s legitimate interests and its enduring connection to the Red Sea.”

Yemane said in a post on X on Wednesday that Ethiopia was “incessantly beating the drums of war and openly stating … that it will launch a war of aggression against Eritrea to acquire what it calls ‘sovereign access to the sea’ … In recent weeks, it has tried to repackage this war agenda in terms of ‘self-defence’ by fabricating various allegations against Eritrea.”

Magnus Taylor, the Horn of Africa deputy director at the Crisis Group think tank, said: “The big worry is that [Abiy] might try to solve all his problems at the same time, by invading Eritrea, possibly a regime change move and also a land grab for the Red Sea port, and also solving his problem with Tigray at the same time. It’s a very ambitious military agenda, though.”

The full impact of the recent fighting on Tigrayan civilians has not been documented, but reports have emerged of the TPLF forcibly recruiting boys as young as 15 to fight. Jalale Getachew Birru, an Acled Ethiopia analyst, said: “The civilians in these three regions [Tigray, Amhara and Afar] didn’t get healed from the first round of violence that was halted by the peace agreement [in 2022]. They just started healing recently.”