Residents Tell BBC That Federal and Tigray Forces Fought Near the Eritrean Border, Driving Families Out Again

Residents Tell BBC That Federal and Tigray Forces Fought Near the Eritrean Border, Driving Families Out Again

November 14, 2026

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Residents said the fighting took place in northwestern Tigray, near the border with Eritrea. Map of Ethiopia and Eritrea: XTheBedrockX/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Residents of Sheraro, Adi Hageray and Biyara in northwestern Tigray told BBC Amharic that the Ethiopian army and Tigray forces fought this week near the Eritrean border, and that families were fleeing again.

They told BBC Amharic that the fighting on Tuesday and Wednesday, Nov. 10 and 11, reached into the countryside, and two of them said artillery and drones were used. “On Tuesday and Wednesday in Adi Kilte the fighting went on without a break from 9 in the morning until 2 in the afternoon. There were so many pregnant women and children there, and when the heavy weapons and the drone strikes suddenly opened up, people stood frozen in fear,” one resident said (our translation from Amharic, as are the other quotes in this story). Another resident said artillery was fired on Thursday toward Badme, where Tigray forces are, and that army units based in Sheraro town, Adi Nebried and Adi Haro tried to push the Tigray forces back by shelling Adi Hiret, on the road to Badme.

A resident who fled from Adi Kilte to Shire told the BBC that the shelling there started at 6 in the morning and went on all day, with infantry fighting and the sound of heavy machine guns. “The fighting was only between the Tigray army and the Ethiopian army. There was no Eritrean army in the area,” he said, adding that Adi Kilte is now under the army’s control. Residents speaking to BBC Afaan Oromoo gave a similar account, though one man near Badme said Tigray forces and Eritrean soldiers were moving inside Badme town and that Eritrean troops had pulled back a little from the town and dug in, and the BBC said it had not independently confirmed which forces were involved.

The Amharic broadcaster Wazema said in its Friday evening summary on X that it had learned that Ethiopian and Eritrean troops fought that day at Adi Bokhray and Adi Asmeru on the border, and that more people were leaving the area out of fear, as Mereja Media reported and @merejatv posted on Saturday. Neither government has confirmed a clash at those places, and Zegabi could not verify the account.

The BBC said it tried and failed to reach the army’s communication head, Colonel Biresaw Shiferaw. The army chief of staff, Field Marshal Birhanu Jula, told residents of Mekelle on Friday that the army was standing on what had been “our trenches.” The national broadcaster reported on its Facebook page that Birhanu said the army had returned to its old positions on the Eritrean border after six years, but it later took the post down, according to the BBC.

Colonel Solomon Hailemariam, spokesman of the Tigray Peace Force, which fights alongside federal troops in Tigray, told BBC Tigrinya that reports on social media of fighting between the Ethiopian and Eritrean armies around Badme were false. Asked who holds Badme, he said, “I don’t think it is right to say Badme is in this one’s hands or that one’s hands, because it is an area where there is military movement.” He said his force had no mission to fight Eritrea alongside the Ethiopian army, and that the border is a federal matter for the army.

The Eritrean government has not commented on this week’s fighting. But its Information Ministry wrote on Facebook on Friday, in a statement also read on state television, that Eritrea was getting ready not only to stop a possible war with Ethiopia but to win it. It accused Ethiopia of having “declared an invasion” against the Eritrean people, without saying when or where. The two governments have traded charges since fighting broke out again in Tigray in late September. In early October, the authorities in Addis Ababa told the UN that Eritrean troops had crossed the border and that Ethiopia had no choice but to defend itself. Asmara answered that Ethiopia was using self-defense as cover for a war on a UN member state.

People who had gone back to Biyara, Ade Smero, Hadish Adi and Dembe Gedamu have been leaving since Wednesday on foot, in whatever vehicles they can find and on camels, one resident told the BBC. They are heading for Adi Hageray, Sheraro and the Adiyabo districts, and others said many of the displaced were making their way to Shire. “The army is behind us, and the Eritrean army and the Tigray army are on the Eritrean side, so the people are afraid,” another resident said. “They are in very serious trouble. Without resting even a little, they have been pushed into a new displacement.”

Zegabi emailed requests for comment at about 10:20 a.m. Eastern on Nov. 14 to Ethiopia’s Foreign Ministry, the African Union, IGAD, OHCHR, OCHA, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and had not received replies by the time of this update.

Sources