Tigrayan Leaders Say Full-Blown War as Fighting Spreads Into Afar and Toward Supply Routes
TPLF vice president Amanuel Assefa told AFP on Thursday, September 24, 2026, that Tigrayan forces are in a state of “full-blown war” with the Ethiopian federal government, as fighting that began Wednesday spread beyond Tigray into neighbouring Afar and Amhara. The remarks, carried by France24, come as both sides accuse each other of starting the new round of open conflict.
A humanitarian source in Afar told AFP that heavy artillery fire continued on Thursday as fighters tried to take the town of Yallo near the Tigrayan border. Local reports cited by Al Jazeera said Abala, a district capital in Afar, had been captured on Wednesday. Assefa confirmed to AFP that Tigrayan forces were fighting alongside local armed groups in Afar and Amhara, after last weekend’s announcement of a wider anti-government alliance that includes Fano and other movements.
Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday, President Taye Atske Selassie Amde decried “the forces of destruction and mayhem” and “interference in our internal affairs by adversarial elements,” language carried in the same AFP reporting. The U.S. embassy said it was “disappointed” to see the TPLF leadership launch a large-scale offensive, after Washington had only recently lifted related sanctions. Regional expert Kjetil Tronvoll of Oslo New University College told AFP that the Afar push may be aimed at cutting supply lines from Djibouti, which carries almost all of Ethiopia’s international trade cargo, including fuel, even while the TPLF’s stated longer aim of reaching Addis Ababa remains a larger strategic question.
ACLED’s September 24 alert places the new fighting inside a broader realignment after the Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Alliance for Survival was announced, with Tigrayan and Amhara Fano forces already coordinating on some border approaches. Abiy Ahmed’s Regime and Tigrayan leaders still offer opposite opening narratives for who fired first. What wire services and monitors now agree on is that the war has widened into Afar corridors that matter for the country’s trade routes, not only for the highland front lines inside Amhara and Tigray.