{"id":179623,"date":"2026-10-21T09:55:58","date_gmt":"2026-10-21T13:55:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/?p=179623"},"modified":"2026-10-21T09:55:58","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T13:55:58","slug":"tigray-peace-force-commander-says-tplf-leaders-crossed-into-eritrea-yemane-gebremeskel-dismissed-the-claim-afp-reports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/179623","title":{"rendered":"Tigray Peace Force Commander Says TPLF Leaders Crossed Into Eritrea; Yemane Gebremeskel Dismissed the Claim, AFP Reports"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A<\/p>\n

A view of Mekelle, the capital of Tigray, in 2018. [file photo] [Wikimedia Commons, A.Savin, Free Art License]<\/em><\/p>\n

Brigadier General Gebre-Egziabher Beyene, a Tigray Peace Force commander who now holds the peace and security post in the federal government\u2019s caretaker administration for Tigray, told residents of Mekelle on Tuesday that leaders of the Tigray People\u2019s Liberation Front (TPLF) had crossed the border into Eritrea, a claim that Eritrean Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel dismissed as \u201clies,\u201d in AFP\u2019s words.<\/p>\n

\u201cTPLF leaders crossed the border into Eritrea,\u201d Gebre-Egziabher said, according to AFP, which said he also claimed the TPLF leaders had taken a \u201clarge amount of military equipment and medicines\u201d to Asmara, the Eritrean capital. AFP said it was not able to immediately verify the claims. The TPLF\u2019s vice president, Amanuel Assefa, also denied them. \u201cThe leadership is working within Tigray,\u201d he told the news agency.<\/p>\n

Clips of the commander\u2019s remarks spread on X through Tuesday and Wednesday, most of them with Amharic captions. A caption posted by Bench Sheko Television<\/a> with a clip of his remarks quoted him as saying that the TPLF\u2019s flight to Eritrea \u201c\u12a8800 \u1260\u120b\u12ed \u1270\u123d\u12a8\u122d\u12ab\u122a\u12ce\u127d\u1295 \u12ed\u12de\u201d (\u201cwith more than 800 vehicles,\u201d in Zegabi\u2019s translation) showed where it stood with the people of Tigray. Sisay Agena (@lualawi2000<\/a>) put two of his lines in the title of a Lualawi video on Wednesday morning: \u201c\u1218\u122a\u12ce\u1279 800 \u1270\u123d\u12a8\u122d\u12ab\u122a \u12ed\u12d8\u12cd \u12a4\u122d\u1275\u122b \u1308\u1265\u1270\u12cb\u120d\u201d (\u201cthe leaders entered Eritrea with 800 vehicles\u201d) and \u201c\u1260\u1218\u12f5\u134d \u12eb\u120b\u1233\u12a9\u1275\u1295\u1363\u1260\u12ad\u120b\u123d \u12a0\u12eb\u1308\u1299\u121d\u201d (\u201cwhat they failed to achieve with artillery, they will not get with Kalashnikovs\u201d). In another clip, posted by Naty Berhane Yifru (@NatyYifru<\/a>), he warned young Tigrayans still with the TPLF leaders that if they kept \u201cfollowing them from wilderness to wilderness\u201d as their guards, they would grow old and spent, and that \u201cregretting it with \u2018woe is me\u2019 will not help,\u201d in Zegabi\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

Yemane had already gone after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on Tuesday morning. At 10:22 a.m. ET, a day after Abiy Ahmed\u2019s Tigrigna-language interview with the Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation in which he warned Eritrea of \u201cvery, very, very severe consequences\u201d<\/a>, the minister answered it point by point on X<\/a>. He wrote that the prime minister, \u201creading from a teleprompter on Ethiopia\u2019s TV yesterday,\u201d had disparaged Eritrea\u2019s economy as \u201cstagnant and in decline,\u201d and that the interview was \u201claced with his three-year old threats of war of aggression and invasion unless Eritrea succumbs to his delusional projects of \u2018sovereign access to the sea\u2019 and \u2018Ethiopian naval presence\u2019 in Eritrea\u2019s coastal territory.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the 300 factories that Abiy Ahmed said Eritrea had when it was part of Ethiopia, Yemane wrote that they \u201cwere old factories built during Italy\u2019s colonization of Eritrea from 1889 until 1941,\u201d that the British Military Administration had dismantled many of them \u201cas \u2018war booty\u2019,\u201d and that Emperor Haile Selassie\u2019s government moved many of the rest to Ethiopia. He then turned the argument back on Addis Ababa, writing that Ethiopia had received \u201c80-90 billion US dollars\u201d in international aid over 35 years and that \u201cthe current regime itself has received over 30 billion US dollars in international assistance in the last 8 years alone.\u201d He called Ethiopia\u2019s ruling Prosperity Party the \u201cPotemkin Party,\u201d a name he has used for weeks.<\/p>\n

Eritrea\u2019s Ministry of Information kept up the line on Wednesday. Its Tigrigna-language commentary<\/a> by Samuel Gebrebrhan, titled \u201c\u12c8\u122b\u122a \u12a8\u121d \u130d\u12f3\u12ed\u201d (\u201cThe invader as victim,\u201d in Zegabi\u2019s translation), attacked Ethiopia\u2019s 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, \u201c\u12a5\u1272 \u1218\u120d\u12a5\u12bd\u1272 \u1213\u1242 \u1295\u121d\u130d\u120b\u133d \u12dd\u12d3\u1208\u1218 \u12a3\u12ed\u12ae\u1290\u1295\u201d (\u201cthe message was not meant to reveal the truth,\u201d in Zegabi\u2019s translation). On Wednesday morning Yemane shared an article<\/a> asking whether the Security Council and the African Union would \u201crein in\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

By 9:50 a.m. ET on Wednesday, Zegabi had found no answer to Yemane\u2019s posts from the Office of the Prime Minister or Ethiopia\u2019s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on X, and no comment on the commander\u2019s claim on the TPLF\u2019s own X account beyond Amanuel\u2019s denial to AFP.<\/p>\n

On X, the exchange drew replies in English, Tigrigna and Arabic. Cameron Hudson (@_hudsonc<\/a>), whose bio says he posts on US-Africa policy, wrote early Wednesday, \u201cAround 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.\u201d Replying to him, Freweini Ghebresadick (@Freweini_Ghebre<\/a>), whose bio says she is Eritrean by birth, wrote, \u201cIf 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.\u201d Sertseyonas Negash (@Sertseyonas<\/a>), whose bio says he works at Eritrea\u2019s Ministry of Information, replied to Yemane that Ethiopia \u201crelies on foreign humanitarian aid to feed its starving people while spending borrowed money and budgetary support on weapons,\u201d while Bazezew Sisay (@BazezewSisay<\/a>) answered the minister\u2019s \u201cPotemkin Party\u201d label with, \u201cOne phrase. Endless repetition. No specifics. A broken record isn\u2019t a rebuttal.\u201d In Tigrigna, Gere Habte (@gere_habte23891<\/a>), whose bio reads \u201cEritrea never kneel down,\u201d praised Yemane and wrote \u201c\u123b\u12d5\u1265\u12eb \u1230\u1265 \u1275\u1218\u122d\u133d\u201d (\u201cShaebia chooses its people\u201d), using the popular name for Eritrea\u2019s ruling front, and an account posting as BREX7 (@BerhanuAsres<\/a>), whose bio reads \u201cAdvocator for #Tigray,\u201d wrote without giving a source that Abiy Ahmed \u201c\u12a3\u1265 \u1275\u130d\u122b\u12ed \u1270\u12c8\u1233\u12ba \u1213\u12f1\u123d \u12d5\u1321\u1245 \u1213\u12ed\u120a \u1295\u121d\u121d\u1235\u122b\u1275 \u1218\u1293\u12a5\u1230\u12ed \u1270\u130b\u1229 \u12ed\u121d\u120d\u121d\u120d \u12a3\u120e \u1270\u1263\u1202\u1209\u201d (\u201cis said to be recruiting young Tigrayans to form an additional new armed force in Tigray\u201d) and that Wedi Antru knew of the plan. In Arabic, Ahmed M. Ibrahim (@AHMEDMIBRAHIM6<\/a>), whose bio describes him as a mechanical engineer, wrote that \u201c\u064a\u062c\u062f \u0622\u0628\u064a \u0623\u062d\u0645\u062f \u0646\u0641\u0633\u0647 \u0639\u0627\u0644\u0642\u064b\u0627 \u0641\u064a \u0627\u062e\u062a\u0646\u0627\u0642 \u062c\u064a\u0648\u0633\u064a\u0627\u0633\u064a \u0635\u0646\u0639\u0647 \u0628\u064a\u062f\u064a\u0647\u201d (\u201cAbiy Ahmed finds himself stuck in a geopolitical bottleneck he made with his own hands\u201d). Translations from Amharic, Tigrigna and Arabic are Zegabi\u2019s. Zegabi has not verified the claims made in these posts.<\/p>\n

Sources<\/strong><\/p>\n