Fighting Erupts Again in Tigray: A Reporter's Account From the Eye of the Storm

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia – On 23 September, fighting erupted in Ethiopia's northern Tigray region, breaking the peace agreement that the government and the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) signed nearly four years ago. The latest clashes, between the federally backed Tigray Peace Force (TPF) and the TPLF, began in the Erbeti area of the Afar region, after the 2022 deal frayed over disarmament and territorial disputes.

War memories return

For reporters covering the conflict on the ground, this war is not just a story on a screen. It revives painful memories of November 2021, when the earlier fighting killed more than half a million people and displaced some 2 million before the parties signed a deal to end the war in 2022.

Shortly after being sent to report, the team faced the familiar challenge of the job: how to stand in the middle of an ongoing battle and bear witness to the truth. They left the capital, Addis Ababa, traveled by road to Afar and then on to Mekelle, the capital of Tigray.

On reaching Erbeti, about 900km northeast of Addis Ababa, the team planned to rest for a few hours and sort out a reporting plan. Events overtook them. Residents began leaving the town—considered safe just a day earlier. Small trucks and cars were packed with belongings, men hurried to load whatever they could carry, and families tried to get out before the fighting reached them.

As the team was weighing its next move, heavy artillery shook the area. Only hours after arriving in Erbeti, they decided to leave, since staying would put the whole crew's lives at risk. That was not the original plan, but war does not care about journalists' plans.

The team withdrew to Afdera, about 100km east along unpaved roads. Afdera is a small town, the administrative center of the district of the same name in Afar, known for salt extraction. They spent the night in their car in the desert, with temperatures above 35°C.

Fighting escalates

The next day, the team rose early to check information, make calls, prepare visual material and coordinate with the newsroom in Doha, Qatar. Heat and humidity sapped their energy as temperatures reached 50°C. Dozing in the car, the reporter kept thinking about Erbeti.

Early the following morning, the team reached Afdera at 7am. The town moved to its own rhythm: many residents ate breakfast after dawn prayers and then went to work. That is the everyday reality of reporting—arriving in an unfamiliar place and learning to adapt to its pace of life.

The team headed back north toward Erbeti, only to find fighting between government-backed forces and the TPLF escalating across the mountains. They could not observe the battle directly, but the sound filled the area. Artillery grew louder as they advanced; at one point the team was less than 3km from the front line.

They put on body armor and helmets, picked up cameras and approached government forces stationed at the front. They captured some footage and brief accounts from soldiers, and then the assignment ended abruptly when soldiers ordered them to evacuate immediately. There was no time to argue or film a final scene; they packed up their equipment and left as artillery still echoed across the mountains behind them.

For days, the team moved along treacherous mountain roads across Afar, Amhara and Tigray. Routes passable in the morning might be unusable by evening; information received before noon needed rechecking by dusk. In villages near the front line, fear was plain on people's faces as mothers packed small bags and children looked out at the road with worried eyes. The reporter set a rule of listening with care, respecting people's pain without exploiting their emotions on camera.

The road to Mekelle

As the reporting continued, the journey turned toward Mekelle, the capital of Tigray. The team reached the city a day after Ethiopian federal forces and their allies moved in; TPLF forces had withdrawn.

Mekelle looked very different. The reporter had expected a city buzzing with unfolding events, but it appeared exhausted, with no permanent police or security presence, as if trying to digest what had happened just hours earlier. Daily life went on cautiously: vehicles passed quietly through the streets, and some neighborhoods had reopened their shops. In some places soldiers were welcomed; in others residents stayed silent, fearing what would come next.

Many people refused to speak on camera because they did not know how events would unfold. There was no chaos in the ordinary sense, but unease was everywhere; it was hard to tell who was maintaining order or what the coming hours would bring. The team had no guarantees about the road ahead, and the possibility that exit routes could close weighed on every decision.

Even so, they had to keep working because audiences were waiting for images and news. As far as the team knew, they were the only media crew in Mekelle at the time—a heavy responsibility, because when you are alone in such a place, every word matters. A reporter must clearly separate what they have seen with their own eyes, what residents recount and what the warring parties announce. In a city just emerging from fighting, verifying information is even harder than gathering it.

The team kept to as normal a working rhythm as possible: filming in the morning, returning to prepare stories and tracking developments hour by hour.

Keeping objectivity

The challenge was not only security. The team also faced the strict ethical demand to stay objective and maintain professional distance in a deeply divided war. People in Tigray carry historical grievances against the federal government. After coming to power in 2018, President Abiy Ahmed reformed political institutions, lifted media censorship and freed thousands of political prisoners. But since then, ethnic tensions have flared in this diverse country of 139 million people.

Filming residents welcoming government-backed forces as they advanced without presenting those scenes as universal, or reporting the fear as TPLF forces withdrew without drawing firm conclusions, could expose the team to accusations of bias from any side that wants to see the battlefield exclusively through its own lens.

So the reporter went beyond what the camera captured, talking with residents and listening to those who wanted to speak only off camera. He understood that the job is not only to hear what people say but also to hear what goes unsaid. Their accounts helped the team understand the situation; every hour in the city, the team tried to weigh different streams of information, aware that a reporter's observations and residents' accounts each offer their own perspectives.

Fatigue from days on the road built up, but the reporter's mind stayed on the day just ended and the day ahead: which road to take, where to go, whether events in the coming hours would allow the plan to be completed. After two weeks moving between front lines, exhaustion had become a constant companion.

As the team continued reporting, rumors that they had been arrested or trapped in the city left colleagues and relatives worried, searching for the smallest scrap of information confirming they were safe. Only after the reporter appeared live on television did he understand what that meant to them. For many people trying to make contact, it was not just a live broadcast but an unintended reassurance that the team was still there—and still alive. He later learned that some Mekelle residents had learned government forces controlled the city through his own broadcast. When communications were cut and facts scarce, television brought people news of events happening right near their homes.

After three days of reporting, the team left Mekelle, carrying testimony and facts that had been recorded. On the way back, looking through the car window at the roads they had traveled over the previous two weeks, the reporter reflected that memories of war do not live only on the battlefield. What stays are the faces of the people they met, the worry in their eyes and the lingering sense that life keeps finding a way to go on, even in the places closest to war.