Fighting Spreads Into Afar and North Wolo, and Ethiopian Airlines Stops Flying to Tigray

Fighting has broken out in Tigray and in the two zones that border it — North Wolo in Amhara and Kilbeti Rasu in Afar — residents and local leaders told Tikvah Ethiopia, days after the TPLF announced it had formed a joint front with other armed groups.

Ethiopian Airlines has suspended all services to Meqelle, Axum and Shire, Addis Fortune reported, as a federal official accused armed groups of seizing airports and attacking positions in the Afar and Amhara regional states.

What the named officials are saying

The head of the Afar Region communication office, Mohammed Ali, said the TPLF began an assault on Afar on Tuesday night, naming Abala and Magale among the affected areas.

Getachew Reda — former president of the Tigray interim administration, now the Prime Minister's adviser on East African affairs — said the TPLF has launched a full attack, and separately accused Eritrea of pushing others to carry the weight of the war.

Fana Television reported that Major General Gebre Adhana, until now the Tigray regional police commissioner, has joined the federal government.

None of these accounts has been independently verified, and fact.et has seen no statement from the TPLF setting out its own version of where fighting is taking place.

Why the airport closures matter commercially

The suspension of flights to all three northern destinations at once is the first hard, checkable consequence for anyone with goods, staff or contracts in Tigray. Road access to the north runs through the same corridors now described as contested, which leaves the region without either of its two normal links to Addis Abeba.

For importers and distributors this is not a security headline but an inventory problem: stock already north of Kombolcha has no scheduled route back, and insurance cover on cargo moving into a zone with an active suspension is unlikely to hold.

Open

No federal military statement has put a boundary around the fighting, and no regional administration has published casualty or displacement figures. Ethiopian Airlines has not said what conditions would restore the northern routes, and no authority has addressed the status of the Djibouti corridor, which carries the overwhelming majority of the country's imports.

The Amharic reports underlying this account reach fact.et through machine translation; the attributions above are reported as the outlets carried them and have not been independently confirmed.

Sources: Tikvah Ethiopia, 24 September 2026, Tikvah Ethiopia, 23 September 2026, Addis Fortune, 23 September 2026, Fana Television, 23 September 2026