Tigrayan Forces Abandon Mekelle as Four Neighbours Issue a Declaration
The Tigray People’s Liberation Front says it has temporarily withdrawn from Mekelle, citing the risk to civilians as the national army closed on the regional capital. Two residents told the BBC that pro-government forces now hold the city and that mobile service has returned in places. The presidents of Egypt, Eritrea, Somalia and Sudan met on Egypt’s coast on Sunday and called for “respecting the sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity of states”.
Two accounts of the same event sit side by side and both are worth keeping: the government describes retaking the city, the TPLF describes a voluntary and temporary relocation. What is agreed is that a capital has changed hands within about ten days of the offensive beginning, and that the Pretoria agreement, which ended a civil war the African Union’s own mediator estimated killed some 600,000 people, is finished. The regional alignment is the harder development. The four presidents who met at El-Alamein all have strained relations with Addis Ababa, and their joint statement rejected “unilateral measures” harming downstream countries — language aimed squarely at the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Ethiopia and Eritrea severed diplomatic relations last week after Addis Ababa accused Asmara of backing a new rebel alliance that the TPLF joined last month alongside six other armed movements, the Amhara Fano militia among them, with the stated aim of removing Abiy Ahmed’s government; Asmara denies it. Ethiopia makes the same accusation against Egypt and Sudan, which they deny, and has expelled an Egyptian diplomat, with Cairo expelling an Ethiopian official in return. The United States has called for restraint and dialogue, and the United Nations warns the fighting is severely disrupting humanitarian work. Watch whether “temporarily” turns into a counter-offensive.