Renewed Ethiopia Tigray fighting erupted on Wednesday, September 23, 2026, as forces linked to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front clashed with Ethiopian federal troops, shaking the fragile 2022 Pretoria peace agreement while world leaders gathered at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
The escalation comes nearly four years after a devastating civil war that killed an estimated hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions. Witnesses, humanitarian sources, and official statements described a sharp deterioration in northern Ethiopia, including fighting near the Tigray-Afar border and reported pressure on regional airports. The United Nations, the African Union, and regional analysts warned that the crisis could widen if the parties do not reverse course.
Tigray conflict flares near airports and border towns
Deutsche Welle reported that witnesses in the towns of Abala and Erebti, on the border with Tigray, confirmed new fighting between Tigray forces and Ethiopian federal troops. Humanitarian sources also reported clashes in the area. Ethiopian Airlines suspended flights to Mekelle, Shire, and Axum, citing the “current situation in the Tigray region,” according to DW.
UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said Secretary-General António Guterres expressed “grave concern” over the rapidly deteriorating situation in northern Ethiopia, including the reported seizure and occupation of three airports in Tigray — Mekelle, Axum, and Shire — with hostilities spreading into neighboring areas. DW noted that reports of Tigray forces taking control of airports could not be independently verified by its journalists.
Oslo-based peace researcher Kjetil Tronvoll told DW he believed “the war has already begun.” German security analyst Gerrit Kurtz of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs said the developments marked “a step towards a war.”
Competing claims over who started the fighting
The two sides offered sharply different accounts of the trigger. In a September 23 statement reported by DW, the National Regional Government of Tigray said its forces were responding defensively to a federal attack, accused Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government of a new “genocidal invasion,” and said it had previously refrained from responding in order to de-escalate. Those allegations could not be independently verified.
Reuters, via The Straits Times, reported that Tigray forces launched a major offensive on Wednesday, while Tigray’s leaders said they were countering federal aggression. Addis Ababa has portrayed the crisis as part of a broader threat from armed groups opposed to the prime minister, according to DW. That disagreement matters: without a shared baseline of facts, ceasefire talks risk collapsing into arguments over who fired first.
Pretoria peace deal under renewed strain
The 2022 Pretoria Agreement ended large-scale fighting between Addis Ababa and the TPLF but left core political and territorial disputes unresolved, analysts say. Western Tigray remains especially contested. The return of hundreds of thousands of displaced people is unfinished, and deeper questions persist about Tigray’s political representation and Ethiopia’s balance between federal autonomy and central authority.
“The Pretoria agreement stopped the fighting, but it did not resolve the underlying political conflict,” Tronvoll told DW. Kurtz argued that the immediate priority is for Ethiopian armed forces and Tigray security forces to stop active hostilities — a necessary but insufficient step if political talks do not resume.
The crisis is also more fragmented than the 2020–2022 war. DW reported that an alliance of seven armed groups opposing Abiy has emerged, including the TPLF, Fano forces from Amhara, and the Oromo Liberation Army — organizations that were bitter enemies during the earlier war. Kurtz described the alliance as tactically significant but politically fragile. The Ethiopian government has accused neighboring Eritrea of supporting the grouping; Eritrea has rejected such allegations, according to DW.
UN and African Union calls for restraint
At the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, Ethiopian President Taye Atske-Selassie Amde told world leaders that Ethiopia had “exercised immense restraint” despite what he called “reckless external actors” and “continued interference,” according to Reuters reporting via The Straits Times. He urged “forces of destruction and mayhem” to respect the right of people in the Horn of Africa to live in peace and prosperity — remarks delivered hours after the renewed fighting shattered calm around the four-year-old peace deal.
Guterres, through Dujarric, called on all parties to exercise maximum restraint, de-escalate immediately, protect civilians, ensure safe and unhindered humanitarian access, and avoid actions that could lead to a broader and more devastating conflict. The secretary-general reiterated support for African Union efforts, including engagement by former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, and called for good-faith talks under the Pretoria framework.
International Crisis Group Horn of Africa director Alan Boswell warned on social media, as cited by The Globe and Mail, that it was “hard to overstate how ugly this could get for the region” without unexpected de-escalation — including the risk that Ethiopia’s crisis could interact with Sudan’s war through shifting regional alliances.
What Ethiopia’s next moves mean for the Horn
For civilians in Tigray, the stakes are immediate. The region has not fully recovered from the earlier war: displacement remains widespread, infrastructure is damaged, and economic recovery is fragile. A return to large-scale combat would compound humanitarian needs just as international attention is divided among other conflicts.
Kurtz told DW that preventing a wider war would require a coalition of efforts by the United States, the African Union, the European Union, and others. The UN General Assembly offered a forum for engagement with Ethiopian officials, but any durable process would also need channels to the armed groups now in the field.
As of Wednesday, Ethiopia Tigray fighting had already forced flight suspensions, drawn a public warning from the UN secretary-general, and put the Pretoria peace architecture under its sharpest test since 2022. Whether the clashes remain a contained flare-up or reopen a multi-front war will depend on how quickly the parties can convert restraint appeals into an enforced pause and a political track addressing disputes the last settlement left unfinished.
