Tigray Peace Force Commander Says TPLF Leaders Crossed Into Eritrea; Yemane Gebremeskel Dismissed the Claim, AFP Reports

Tigray Peace Force Commander Says TPLF Leaders Crossed Into Eritrea; Yemane Gebremeskel Dismissed the Claim, AFP Reports

October 21, 2026

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A view of Mekelle, the capital of Tigray, in 2018. [file photo] [Wikimedia Commons, A.Savin, Free Art License]

Brigadier General Gebre-Egziabher Beyene, a Tigray Peace Force commander who now holds the peace and security post in the federal government’s caretaker administration for Tigray, told residents of Mekelle on Tuesday that leaders of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) had crossed the border into Eritrea, a claim that Eritrean Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel dismissed as “lies,” in AFP’s words.

“TPLF leaders crossed the border into Eritrea,” Gebre-Egziabher said, according to AFP, which said he also claimed the TPLF leaders had taken a “large amount of military equipment and medicines” to Asmara, the Eritrean capital. AFP said it was not able to immediately verify the claims. The TPLF’s vice president, Amanuel Assefa, also denied them. “The leadership is working within Tigray,” he told the news agency.

Clips of the commander’s remarks spread on X through Tuesday and Wednesday, most of them with Amharic captions. A caption posted by Bench Sheko Television with a clip of his remarks quoted him as saying that the TPLF’s flight to Eritrea “ከ800 በላይ ተሽከርካሪዎችን ይዞ” (“with more than 800 vehicles,” in Zegabi’s translation) showed where it stood with the people of Tigray. Sisay Agena (@lualawi2000) put two of his lines in the title of a Lualawi video on Wednesday morning: “መሪዎቹ 800 ተሽከርካሪ ይዘው ኤርትራ ገብተዋል” (“the leaders entered Eritrea with 800 vehicles”) and “በመድፍ ያላሳኩትን፣በክላሽ አያገኙም” (“what they failed to achieve with artillery, they will not get with Kalashnikovs”). In another clip, posted by Naty Berhane Yifru (@NatyYifru), he warned young Tigrayans still with the TPLF leaders that if they kept “following them from wilderness to wilderness” as their guards, they would grow old and spent, and that “regretting it with ‘woe is me’ will not help,” in Zegabi’s translation of the Amharic caption. The 800 figure appears only in captions posted on X. Zegabi has not been able to check it, and AFP did not report it.

Gebre-Egziabher, whom several of those posts call by his nickname, Wedi Antru, was named on Oct. 16 as chief executive officer of peace and security in the six-month caretaker administration that the authorities in Addis Ababa set up for Tigray. The Tigray Peace Force has fought alongside Ethiopian federal forces in the weeks of fighting that ended with federal troops taking Mekelle earlier this month. BBC Tigrinya reported on Oct. 8 that he had told AFP Eritrean soldiers had entered Tigray carrying heavy weapons.

Yemane had already gone after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on Tuesday morning. At 10:22 a.m. ET, a day after Abiy Ahmed’s Tigrigna-language interview with the Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation in which he warned Eritrea of “very, very, very severe consequences”, the minister answered it point by point on X. He wrote that the prime minister, “reading from a teleprompter on Ethiopia’s TV yesterday,” had disparaged Eritrea’s economy as “stagnant and in decline,” and that the interview was “laced with his three-year old threats of war of aggression and invasion unless Eritrea succumbs to his delusional projects of ‘sovereign access to the sea’ and ‘Ethiopian naval presence’ in Eritrea’s coastal territory.”

On the 300 factories that Abiy Ahmed said Eritrea had when it was part of Ethiopia, Yemane wrote that they “were old factories built during Italy’s colonization of Eritrea from 1889 until 1941,” that the British Military Administration had dismantled many of them “as ‘war booty’,” and that Emperor Haile Selassie’s government moved many of the rest to Ethiopia. He then turned the argument back on Addis Ababa, writing that Ethiopia had received “80-90 billion US dollars” in international aid over 35 years and that “the current regime itself has received over 30 billion US dollars in international assistance in the last 8 years alone.” He called Ethiopia’s ruling Prosperity Party the “Potemkin Party,” a name he has used for weeks.

Eritrea’s Ministry of Information kept up the line on Wednesday. Its Tigrigna-language commentary by Samuel Gebrebrhan, titled “ወራሪ ከም ግዳይ” (“The invader as victim,” in Zegabi’s translation), attacked Ethiopia’s letter to the UN Security Council and said that when Foreign Minister Gedion Timothewos wrote that Eritrean troops had crossed the border and gone 30 to 60 kilometers into Tigray, “እቲ መልእኽቲ ሓቂ ንምግላጽ ዝዓለመ ኣይኮነን” (“the message was not meant to reveal the truth,” in Zegabi’s translation). On Wednesday morning Yemane shared an article asking whether the Security Council and the African Union would “rein in” what it called Ethiopian expansionism. Ethiopia accuses Eritrea of backing the TPLF, while Eritrea accuses its neighbor of wanting the port of Assab, AFP noted. The two countries severed diplomatic relations this month.

By 9:50 a.m. ET on Wednesday, Zegabi had found no answer to Yemane’s posts from the Office of the Prime Minister or Ethiopia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on X, and no comment on the commander’s claim on the TPLF’s own X account beyond Amanuel’s denial to AFP.

On X, the exchange drew replies in English, Tigrigna and Arabic. Cameron Hudson (@_hudsonc), whose bio says he posts on US-Africa policy, wrote early Wednesday, “Around and around we go with claims and counter-claims. The risk of course is that the TPLF becomes a sort of Interhamwe leading a cross-border insurgency for years to come.” Replying to him, Freweini Ghebresadick (@Freweini_Ghebre), whose bio says she is Eritrean by birth, wrote, “If Abiy Ahmed cannot locate and apprehend TPLF leaders inside Tigray, it is difficult to see why Eritrea would be expected to do so on his behalf.” Sertseyonas Negash (@Sertseyonas), whose bio says he works at Eritrea’s Ministry of Information, replied to Yemane that Ethiopia “relies on foreign humanitarian aid to feed its starving people while spending borrowed money and budgetary support on weapons,” while Bazezew Sisay (@BazezewSisay) answered the minister’s “Potemkin Party” label with, “One phrase. Endless repetition. No specifics. A broken record isn’t a rebuttal.” In Tigrigna, Gere Habte (@gere_habte23891), whose bio reads “Eritrea never kneel down,” praised Yemane and wrote “ሻዕብያ ሰብ ትመርጽ” (“Shaebia chooses its people”), using the popular name for Eritrea’s ruling front, and an account posting as BREX7 (@BerhanuAsres), whose bio reads “Advocator for #Tigray,” wrote without giving a source that Abiy Ahmed “ኣብ ትግራይ ተወሳኺ ሓዱሽ ዕጡቅ ሓይሊ ንምምስራት መናእሰይ ተጋሩ ይምልምል ኣሎ ተባሂሉ” (“is said to be recruiting young Tigrayans to form an additional new armed force in Tigray”) and that Wedi Antru knew of the plan. In Arabic, Ahmed M. Ibrahim (@AHMEDMIBRAHIM6), whose bio describes him as a mechanical engineer, wrote that “يجد آبي أحمد نفسه عالقًا في اختناق جيوسياسي صنعه بيديه” (“Abiy Ahmed finds himself stuck in a geopolitical bottleneck he made with his own hands”). Translations from Amharic, Tigrigna and Arabic are Zegabi’s. Zegabi has not verified the claims made in these posts.

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