Allied militias of the Ethiopian Executive have managed to enter Mekelle, the capital of the Tigray region, after the withdrawal of the rebel forces that controlled the city in the context of the confrontation between the opposition coalition, various armed groups, and the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.
"A few members of the Tigray Peace Forces (TPF) are at the headquarters of Radio Mekelle and other points in the city after the cowardly withdrawal of the TPLF from Mekelle," the TPF has reported, a group split from the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) that now supports the Ethiopian central government.
The TPF has highlighted in a message published on social media that "this city is full of wonderful people and has a lot of potential." "They remind us why we put our lives at risk for real change. What a blessing!" they have stated.
Despite these announcements, the federal authorities of Ethiopia have not officially confirmed that Mekelle has once again come under pro-government control. The city had been in the hands of the insurgents since May, under the control of an alliance made up of the TPLF and six other organizations, grouped under the name Coalition for the Survival of Ethiopian People's Forces (CSFPE).
This morning, the TPLF announced its withdrawal from Mekelle, while the TPF claimed to have taken the airport of the regional capital. "The Government of Tigray decided to temporarily withdraw from Mekelle to allow our Army to destroy the enemy in the face of possible attacks that this genocidal regime may launch against our people and our city," the TPLF explained in a message published on its social media.
The tensions accumulated over months between the Ethiopian government and the authorities of Tigray, combined with internal disputes within the regional leadership itself, led to a new escalation of hostilities in mid-last month and the collapse of the Pretoria Agreements (South Africa), signed in 2022 to end the devastating previous conflict, which caused between 100,000 and 600,000 deaths in just two years, according to estimates from the Ethiopian government and the African Union.
The Executive of Addis Ababa has accused countries such as Eritrea, Sudan, and Egypt of supporting the so-called Forces of the Coalition for the Survival of the Peoples of Ethiopia, an armed alliance articulated around the TPLF and the traditional authorities of Tigray, central actors in the 2020 war and who, after Pretoria, had faded into the background until their recent return to the forefront of the conflict.
In July, the Ethiopian government declared null and void the peace agreement sealed in 2022 in Pretoria with the TPLF, which meant the resumption of a war that, between 2020 and 2022, left between 100,000 and 600,000 dead, according to various sources.
After the signing of Pretoria, Tigray was under a provisional administration accepted by the federal Executive, a situation that remained until the return of the TPLF to regional power in early May. Since then, the formation has repeatedly accused the Ethiopian government of failing to comply with what was agreed in Pretoria and of keeping the region in a situation of total marginalization.
The federal government, on the other hand, has refused to recognize the administration reinstated by the TPLF and maintains that the only legitimate authority in Tigray is the Provisional Regional Administration of Tigray, created under the Pretoria Agreement and subsequently displaced by the return of the former leaders.