Fighting Erupts in Western Tigray, Ethiopia, with TPLF Trading Blame

Fighting has erupted in western Tigray, marking one of the most serious violations of the three-year-old peace agreement between Ethiopia's federal government and fighters in the northern region.

The Tigray regional administration said in a statement from Mekelle, the regional capital, that federal forces launched an attack at dawn on Saturday, advancing from the direction of Sheraro, near the Sudanese border.

Abraham Belay, a minister who once led Tigray's interim administration during the war, confirmed the clashes but accused forces loyal to Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) chairman Debretsion Gebremichael of starting them. “Enough of war! Resolve differences through dialogue,” he wrote on Facebook.

The fighting follows months of deteriorating relations between Addis Ababa and the TPLF, which ruled Ethiopia for nearly three decades before Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed came to power in 2018. Both sides accuse each other of failing to implement the terms of the 2022 peace deal.

The Tigray government accuses Ethiopia's ruling Prosperity Party of waging a prolonged campaign of blockade and drone strikes against the region, now escalated into full-scale war. The regional administration has called on Tigrayan forces, civil society, and religious organizations to prepare for what it calls a struggle for national survival, using the slogan “No to the Destruction of the Nation.”

Getachew Reda, a former TPLF spokesperson now advising Abiy, urged Tigray Defense Force commanders to abandon Debretsion, accusing him of relying on Eritrea and Amhara's Fano militia to seek a return to power. Reda and Redwan Hussein, Ethiopia's intelligence chief, who signed the Pretoria agreement for the TPLF and the federal government in 2022, co-wrote an op-ed in Al Jazeera in June warning of imminent war.

Kjetil Tronvoll, an Ethiopia expert at Oslo New University College, told Al Jazeera that the clashes are “the most serious incident” since the 2022 peace deal. The agreement, according to Tronvoll, halted the war between the two sides but left “the root causes of the conflict between Mekelle and Addis” unresolved.

In the days before the fighting, Ethiopian state media ran a campaign accusing Debretsion of calling on Tigrayans to move toward war.

The clashes ended months of escalating confrontation since the November 2022 Pretoria Agreement, which ended a war that began two years earlier and killed hundreds of thousands, but left deep disagreements unresolved over disarmament and the TPLF's legal status.

In June, the U.S. imposed visa restrictions on those it considered TPLF “hardliners” allegedly obstructing peace. The TPLF called this based on an “incomplete and unbalanced” picture of the impasse. By mid-July, the TPLF declared the Pretoria deal “actually dead,” even as U.S. Ambassador Ervin Massinga visited Mekelle to try to preserve it.

Faisal Roble, a regional analyst, told Al Jazeera that the outbreak of fighting is a sign that U.S. efforts to resolve disputes between the two sides have failed. “Without strong international intervention, we could be heading toward a much larger war,” he said.