---
title: "Mekelle Falls Again, and Ethiopia’s Neighbours Weigh How Far to Follow the War"
description: "The Tigrayan rebels have left the city for the hills. Eritrean trucks are reported in Adigrat, and four presidents met at New Alamein"
author: "Jan Sokol"
published: 2026-10-09T00:08:33Z
modified: 2026-10-09T09:32:46Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/mekelle-falls-again-and-ethiopia-s-neighbours-weigh-how-far--a576f7
language: en
tags: ["ethiopia", "tigray", "eritrea", "red-sea", "war", "world"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# Mekelle Falls Again, and Ethiopia’s Neighbours Weigh How Far to Follow the War

*The Tigrayan rebels have left the city for the hills. Eritrean trucks are reported in Adigrat, and four presidents met at New Alamein*

By Jan Sokol · October 9, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/mekelle-falls-again-and-ethiopia-s-neighbours-weigh-how-far--a576f7

## In brief

- Federal forces entered Mekelle after nearly two weeks of fighting as the TPLF-led rebel alliance withdrew into the countryside
- Abiy, sworn in for a new five-year term, again pledged to secure Ethiopia an outlet to the sea
- Egypt, Eritrea, Sudan and Somalia met at New Alamein on Oct 4 and issued a declaration on the Red Sea, the Nile and sovereignty
- Witnesses and a government-allied commander reported Eritrean troops in Adigrat and Idaga Hamus; Eritrea has not confirmed it
- Analysts say Eritrea may prefer a long war fought on Tigrayan soil that keeps Ethiopia’s army tied down

Mekelle has been taken before. In 2020, when federal troops entered the Tigrayan capital, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government announced that it had won. Tigrayan fighters went up into the mountains, regrouped, swept back across the region and retook the city, and the war went on for nearly another year and a half.

Now the city has changed hands again. After almost two weeks of heavy fighting, federal forces entered Mekelle while the rebel alliance, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) among its members, pulled out, [Zecharias Zelalem reports for Al Jazeera](https://aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/9/will-ethiopias-neighbours-intervene-as-tigray-war-escalates). The army came with aircraft and ground troops. The rebels lost one fight after another around Alamata and Kobo, then fell back into the countryside. The Associated Press [reported](https://www.wsls.com/news/world/2026/10/08/eritrean-soldiers-entered-northern-ethiopian-towns-government-allied-commander-says/) that government-allied fighters went into the city on Sunday, after the TPLF announced its withdrawal. On Wednesday the Tigray Peace Force, which counts former members of the TPLF’s own armed wing in its ranks, put Mekelle under curfew from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m.

The rebels have not surrendered. They have only moved.

> “We will confront the enemy on our terms and where we choose,”

That was TPLF leader Debretsion Gebremichael. A reflection, and no more than that: governments know how to count a captured capital, and they have always been worse at counting the hills around it.

In practice the fighting that broke out late last month has finished off the 2022 Pretoria ceasefire and the uneasy peace that came after it. Ethiopia was already fighting insurgencies in Amhara and Oromia. The TPLF, the Amhara Fano and the Oromo Liberation Army are each pressing on the federal government in their own part of the country, and they belong to an [alliance with no agreed plan for afterwards](https://rews.cc/a/ethiopia-s-uneasy-alliance-seven-rebel-armies-one-common-ene-d88ef6). If they can keep the army busy while staying out of the big towns, Mekelle may turn out to be only the first chapter.

## The sea

Ethiopia has had no coast since 1991, when Eritrea won its war of independence. Most of its seaborne trade goes through Djibouti, and Addis Ababa has looked for other routes through Kenya and Somaliland. Since 2023 Abiy has treated access to the Red Sea as a strategic priority, and Asmara has worried in particular about the port of Assab. When Abiy was [sworn in on Monday](https://rews.cc/a/abiy-sworn-in-for-five-more-years-and-his-first-demand-is-th-055117) for another five years, after his party won the June 1 election, he went back to the subject in parliament: “Based on the principle of give and take, we will work diligently to ensure that Ethiopia has an outlet to the sea.”

Hossamaldeen Ibrahim, an analyst at the Bloomsbury Intelligence and Security Institute, said the rebels’ battlefield losses have alarmed Egypt and Ethiopia’s other rivals. “Egypt views the Renaissance Dam, and any Ethiopian \[army\] move towards the Red Sea, as a strategic threat, so it has allied with Eritrea, Sudan and Somalia against any Ethiopian unilateralism,” he said. “Ethiopia is seeking a sea outlet; Eritrea sees this as an existential threat.”

## Four presidents at New Alamein

On October 4 Egypt’s Abdel Fattah al-Sisi hosted Eritrea’s Isaias Afwerki, Somalia’s Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and Sudan’s Abdel Fattah al-Burhan at New Alamein, on the Mediterranean coast. In their [joint declaration](https://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2026/10/04/alamein-declaration-egypt-eritrea-sudan-and-somalia-forge-unified-front-on-red-sea-governance-state-sovereignty-and-nile-rights/) they said that governing the Red Sea is a matter only for the states on its shores. They rejected any one-sided action that harms the existing water uses of the downstream Nile countries, rejected any recognition of Somaliland, and agreed to set up a joint mechanism that will meet regularly on regional security. The declaration also called for respect for sovereignty, for noninterference in other states’ internal affairs and for disputes to be settled peacefully.

It is not a military pact, and the four have different interests in dealing with Addis Ababa. [Addis Standard noted](https://addisstandard.com/egypt-eritrea-somalia-and-sudan-converge-as-tensions-with-ethiopia-deepen/) that the summit took place as their relations with Ethiopia were getting sharply worse. On October 1 Ethiopia closed its embassy in Asmara and expelled Eritrean diplomats, accusing Eritrea of hostile acts and of a part in the new fighting. Eritrea [cut diplomatic ties](https://rews.cc/a/eritrea-severs-all-diplomatic-ties-with-ethiopia-after-10-of-d0af93) in return and denied backing the rebel alliance. Egypt and Sudan also deny Ethiopia’s charge that they support it. Three capitals accused of interference have now signed a document condemning interference.

## Where Eritrea wants the war fought

In 2020–22 Eritrean soldiers fought on Ethiopia’s side. The friendship between Abiy and Isaias has since gone cold. The AP reported Eritrean troops entering Adigrat and Idaga Hamus after crossing the border, and Eritrea has neither confirmed nor denied it. Two witnesses [told Reuters](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/7/witnesses-spot-eritrean-troops-inside-northern-ethiopia-as-tensions-flare) they saw dozens of Eritrean soldiers in two trucks driving through Adigrat, which lies about 25 km south of the border, and that they knew them by their off-white camouflage. Reuters could not verify the accounts. The conflict monitor ACLED said Eritrean troops crossed at Zelambesa and that Ethiopian drones struck them at Guada, [according to the AP](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2026/10/08/ethiopia-eritrea-tigray-mekelle-shire-tplf-drones/b592c42c-c2e3-11f1-8170-681419af1cc9_story.html).

“The \[Ethiopian army’s\] advance in Tigray directly threatens \[Eritrean President\] Isaias \[Afwerki\] and the Eritrean state,” said Etana H Dinka, an assistant professor of African history at the University of Miami. Mohamed Kheir Omer, a researcher who studies the Horn of Africa, explained Asmara’s reasoning: Eritrea “seems keen on boosting TPLF forces withdrawing northwards, so that the engagement between Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers takes place in Tigrayan territory, and not in Eritrea.”

From Asmara the sums are simple. A long war in Tigray keeps the Ethiopian army busy and the sea out of reach. A clean federal victory would leave Addis Ababa free to look elsewhere. Eritrea therefore has a reason to support whoever can keep the army pinned down, and it need not go to war itself to do so.

## The dam and the camp

Sudan’s war makes the picture more complicated still. According to Reuters, Egypt has given Sudan’s army political backing and logistical and technical help. The army’s enemy, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has been accused of atrocities in Darfur. In February a Reuters investigation reported that Ethiopia was hosting a camp in its western Benishangul-Gumuz region where thousands of RSF-linked fighters were being trained. Eight sources, a senior Ethiopian official among them, told the agency that the United Arab Emirates had paid to build the camp and supplied trainers and logistics. The UAE denied it, and Reuters said it could not independently verify the Emirati role.

For Cairo the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is still the main fear. For Asmara, Ethiopia’s search for a coast is a question of national survival.

## Diplomacy or the battlefield

Shared fears do not add up to a joint invasion. Egypt has its own calculations about the Nile and about Sudan. Somalia has security troubles of its own and a tangled relationship with Addis Ababa. Sudan is consumed by its civil war. Only Eritrea has soldiers reportedly inside Tigray, and it has said nothing about them. How deeply the neighbours get involved may depend on whether the TPLF can keep the federal army in Tigray and away from the Eritrean border.

“It isn’t difficult to understand Cairo’s commitment to prevent Ethiopia from succeeding in the current warfare, whatever its army’s intended goals, including Abiy’s acclaimed access to the Red Sea, are,” Dinka said.

In Mekelle, meanwhile, the curfew starts at eight in the evening.