The Popular Front for the Liberation of Tigray (TPLF), which acts as the administration of this northern Ethiopian state, has assured that the Ethiopian Army has initiated a new military operation this Saturday in the western sector of the region. This movement represents a new escalation of the crisis, just a month after the TPLF declared the Pretoria peace agreement (South Africa) collapsed, the pact that ended one of the deadliest wars in the recent history of the African continent.
In a statement disseminated on Facebook, the TPLF claims that clashes have erupted in the early morning in the Shererina area and describes this episode as the beginning of an "open war" in Western Tigray.
"This dictatorial and genocidal regime," the TPLF has denounced in its statement published on social media, "has intensified the blockade and siege that it has been carrying out against the people of Tigray, using drone attacks and infantry."
The text calls on the population of Tigray, security forces, civil society organizations, and religious institutions to prepare for what it qualifies as a conflict reignited by "national survival."
The Ethiopian federal government has not yet offered a response to these accusations, which are framed within a crisis reopened on July 11, when the TPLF declared the agreement reached in 2022 in Pretoria dissolved and warned of the imminent resumption of a war that, in just two years (2020-2022), caused between 100,000 and 600,000 deaths, according to figures from the Ethiopian authorities and estimates from the African Union.
After the signing in Pretoria, Tigray was under the temporary management of a provisional government accepted by the federal authorities until the return of the TPLF in early May. Since then, the Tigrayan leadership has repeatedly accused the central government and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed of violating the commitments of the agreement and keeping the region in a state of total marginalization.
The federal government, on the other hand, refuses to recognize the administration reinstated by the TPLF and maintains that the only legitimate authority in Tigray remains the Provisional Regional Administration of Tigray, created under the Pretoria Agreement and now displaced by the return of the TPLF to regional power.