ADDIS ABABA (The Thursday Times) — Ethiopia’s military chief on Saturday accused neighbouring Eritrea of leading a new offensive by Tigrayan forces against federal troops and said Egypt had supplied the weapons, as fighting on two of Ethiopia’s borders drove thousands of people from their homes.
“The offensive was led by Eritrea, with logistical support and military supplies provided by Egypt,” Field Marshal Birhanu Jula, chief of general staff of the Ethiopian National Defense Forces, told a press conference. “However, our forces managed to repel the offensive.”
Jula said the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) had launched a fourth round of attacks on army positions across the Amhara and Afar regions. Its commanders, he said, had fled to Eritrea after being pushed back and were sheltering in Adi Keyh, Mendefera, and the capital, Asmara.
Neither Eritrea nor Egypt responded immediately. Both have rejected earlier Ethiopian accusations of interference, and the army chief’s claims could not be independently verified.
‘To destroy Ethiopia’
Jula went further, accusing Asmara of assembling a coalition of the TPLF, the Amhara-based Fano militia, the Oromo Liberation Front, Sudan, and Egypt. “The ultimate objective was to unite these forces to destroy Ethiopia and overthrow its government,” he said, adding that Eritrea wanted the fighting on Ethiopian soil to keep it off its own territory.
He also accused Tigray’s authorities of forcibly recruiting young people, saying as many as 800,000 had fled the region to avoid being drafted.
Sudan’s army, which is fighting its own war against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, accused Ethiopia earlier this month of letting the group launch drones from Ethiopian territory. It captured a key town in West Kordofan on Friday.
Shelling near Badme
Ethiopia and Eritrea fought side by side in the 2020–2022 Tigray war, but relations have collapsed amid claims that each backs the other’s armed opponents, and over Ethiopia’s push for access to the Red Sea, which Eritrea calls a threat to its sovereignty. Addis Ababa denies seeking sea access by force.
Diplomats familiar with intelligence assessments said on Saturday that clashes near the disputed border town of Badme had escalated over several days, with Ethiopian drone strikes and Eritrean heavy artillery. Residents reported explosions at night, shuttered shops, and families fleeing.
“The biggest shared concern among the international community is that this will be sliding into a full-blown military conflict,” one diplomat said.
The conflict monitor ACLED reported on Friday that Ethiopian troops were positioned between Sheraro and Badme, with Eritrean forces near the town’s edge, and that neither army controlled it. Ethiopian forces took Sheraro on November 3, according to conflict monitors. Badme was the flashpoint of the 1998–2000 border war between the two countries, which killed tens of thousands of people.
G7 foreign ministers meeting in Paris on November 9 and 10 voiced “great concern” and urged both governments to “exercise maximum restraint”.
Fighting spills into Kenya
In the south, fighting along Ethiopia’s disputed boundary between the Oromia and Somali regions, which broke out on October 18 after a row over a regional flag and the killing of a 13-year-old girl, has crossed into Kenya.
Mohamud Ali, governor of Kenya’s Marsabit County, said on Friday that stray bullets had killed two Kenyans and wounded 22, that about 10,000 residents had been displaced, and that more than 50,000 Ethiopians had crossed into the county seeking safety. Measles and rubella cases have been confirmed in crowded shelters, he said.
On Saturday, local authorities said armed Oromo militiamen had killed at least eight Somali civilians, including women and children, in a dawn attack on a settlement in Ethiopia’s Dawa Zone, across the border from Kenya’s Mandera County.
