At Least 52 Civilians Killed as Ethiopia Retakes a Tigray Town
Hospital sources put the civilian death toll at 52 after three days of heavy fighting around Alamata in northern Tigray. Government troops appear to have taken the town from regional forces and intend to push north towards Mekelle, the region’s main city. Each side accuses the other of breaking the 2022 agreement that ended a two-year civil war, and of starting this round of it.
The Pretoria agreement has been eroding for years rather than collapsing this week, and the argument over who fired first is itself part of the war: the party that runs Tigray says it was answering a federal offensive that included drone strikes, while the government says Tigrayan forces attacked first after seizing airports across the region. Almost none of it can be verified, because communications to the area have been cut. The spread matters more than the town. Fighting has reached neighbouring Amhara, where a local militia has allied itself with Tigrayan fighters, and 33 tourists have been stranded for a week in Lalibela, the Unesco site whose thirteenth-century rock-hewn churches are a holy place for millions of Orthodox Christians; its airport closed to commercial flights last Wednesday and fourteen Israeli visitors were lifted out by military helicopter on Monday. Earlier in September seven armed movements formed an alliance whose stated purpose is removing the government in Addis Ababa, which accuses Eritrea of backing them. Asmara denies it. Watch whether the push north reaches Mekelle.