ADDIS ABABA — Ethiopia’s renewed war has entered its sixth week with no sign of abating, and the consequences are compounding faster than any mediator can address. The November 2022 Pretoria peace agreement, which ended a conflict that killed an estimated 600,000 people, is now effectively dead. Fighting has spread from Tigray into Amhara and beyond. Drone strikes are killing civilians in displacement camps and food distribution points. The health system in the north is “closer to collapse,” according to the World Health Organization’s director-general. And along the Eritrean border, what began as an internal rebellion risks becoming an interstate war that could open a second front on the Red Sea.
A Peace Agreement in Ruins
The current phase of the conflict began on September 23, when the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) announced a “defensive war” against federal forces . The TPLF has since joined the Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Alliance for Survival, a coalition of seven armed groups—including the Amhara Fano militia and the Oromo Liberation Army—formed in September with the stated aim of removing Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government . The alliance says it has approved plans to strengthen cooperation, coordinate domestic and diaspora campaigns, and expand diplomatic engagement, accusing the ruling Prosperity Party of fueling “conflict, displacement and poverty” .
Federal forces have made rapid advances in Tigray, but the fighting has spread. Clashes have been reported in Amhara’s Woldia and along the Dessie-Woldia highway, while government forces recaptured Wuchale town from Fano rebels . In Oromia, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church reported that at least 60 Orthodox Christians were killed in attacks in the Arsi zone, prompting condemnation from the U.S. ambassador .
The human toll is mounting in ways that are difficult to verify but impossible to ignore. On October 30, a drone strike hit the center of Rama town in Tigray, killing 11 people. The previous day, drone attacks in Amhara killed 14, including women and children . WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, himself Tigrayan, said children—including a newborn—were among those reportedly killed at the Jaari 2 displacement camp in Amhara, and that several people died in Rama while trying to get food. “While these are the latest incidents, drone attacks and civilian casualties have tragically become frequent across Ethiopia,” he said .
The Health System at Breaking Point
Tedros’s warning was blunt: the violence is pushing an already fragile health system “closer to collapse.” Hospitals in the north face shortages of health workers, medicines, and equipment. Ambulance services are “severely limited.” Insecurity is obstructing the delivery of life-saving supplies to some areas. “Civilians must be protected,” he said. “Health workers and humanitarian supplies must be allowed to reach those in need” .
The humanitarian picture beyond the hospitals is equally grim. The UN’s humanitarian coordination office reported that thousands of people have been displaced in Debre Berhan in Amhara and in Shire in northwestern Tigray. Families who had recently returned to Diabo in northwestern Tigray have been forced to flee again because of renewed military activities. In Amhara, insecurity is restricting movement along the main roads connecting Gondar with Debark and Metema, disrupting aid delivery .
A humanitarian assessment cited by Ethiopiaid found that in screenings conducted across Laelay Adiabo, Axum, and Adwa in Tigray, approximately 15 percent of the 11,800 children screened were experiencing moderate acute malnutrition. In Raya Azebo, southern Tigray, of roughly 26,000 hectares of farmland, around 10,000 were left unplanted due to lack of rainfall, and of the land that was cultivated, only about 400 hectares showed crop growth . Drought and war are compounding each other, and the people caught between them are running out of coping mechanisms.
The Eritrean Powder Keg
The most dangerous dimension of the conflict is its potential to become an interstate war. Ethiopia accuses Eritrea of sending troops into Tigray to support the TPLF—a reversal of the 2020-2022 war, when Eritrean forces fought alongside Ethiopian troops against the TPLF. Eritrea denies the allegation, with a senior diplomat telling The African Gazette that “neither the media outlets nor the Ethiopian government has been able to produce any evidence to back their claims” .
But the military movements suggest otherwise. Fides news agency reported that direct clashes between Ethiopian and Eritrean forces erupted along the Egela-Tsorona front on October 30, when Ethiopian drones and artillery bombarded Eritrean positions near Qolo-Berdo. On the morning of November 1, infantry units from both armies fought at close range . The JINSA think tank warned that if fighting spreads toward the Red Sea port of Assab—which Ethiopia’s leadership has long covetously described as a lost gateway to the sea—it could open a “second Red Sea front” without either side targeting merchant vessels. Weekly vessel transits through the Bab el-Mandeb have already fallen from about 38 to 25 since the Houthis renewed attacks in July, leaving little margin for a second shock .
Eritrea’s information minister accused Ethiopia’s ruling party of waging a “frenzied and misleading” campaign to justify an “aggressive war,” including portraying the port of Assab as “Ethiopian land usurped” that must be recovered . Russia, which recently delivered Su-35 fighter jets to Ethiopia, has offered to mediate . Whether Moscow has the leverage—or the inclination—to pull both sides back from the brink is uncertain.
A Government Under Pressure, an Opposition United
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s response to the crisis has combined military mobilization with political signaling. He posted on social media that government leaders were undergoing military training at Hurso in eastern Ethiopia, saying the training strengthened “discipline, leadership and readiness” . The government has also established a six-month transitional administration for Tigray, tasked with restoring services and preparing for local elections. But the administration has introduced regulations barring individuals involved in “an illegal group’s previous war” from contesting local positions, effectively excluding TPLF members—a move that suggests the government intends to govern Tigray without the party it has been fighting .
On the battlefield, both sides are claiming victories. The TPLF claimed its forces killed 500 Ethiopian soldiers and wounded 800 near Aksum on October 31. A prominent activist reported that government forces and allied Tigray Peace Forces killed a senior TPLF commander, Col. Semere Teklu, and captured two others . Neither claim can be independently verified, but the intensity of the fighting is not in dispute.
No End in Sight
Ethiopia’s war today is not a single conflict but a convergence of several: a Tigrayan rebellion against federal authority, an Amhara insurgency that began in 2023, an Oromo liberation struggle that predates both, and now a standoff with Eritrea that could escalate into a conventional war. The opposition alliance has united these disparate fronts under a single political objective—the removal of Abiy’s government—but the groups have different grievances, different territorial claims, and different visions for Ethiopia’s future.
For the civilians in Debre Berhan, Shire, Rama, and the Jaari 2 camp, the war’s complexities are irrelevant. What matters is whether the next drone strike hits a military target or a food distribution line, whether the hospital has medicine, whether the aid convoy can reach them before the supply runs out. Tedros’s appeal—”Civilians must be protected”—is the minimum the international community can demand. It is also, at present, the most that can be said. The guns are not silent, the mediators are not present, and the peace agreement that was supposed to prevent this is a memory. Ethiopia’s war continues, and the people bearing its weight have nowhere left to go.
