Ethiopia ordered the closure of its embassy in Eritrea, and declared 10 Eritrean diplomats persona non grata, yesterday, Thursday, prompting Asmara to sever all diplomatic relations with its neighbour, after hearing explosions during the night in Addis Ababa that raised fears of the expansion of the renewed conflict in northern Ethiopia.
Addis Ababa accused Eritrea, Sudan, and Egypt of supporting an opposition coalition led by the Tigray People's Liberation Front, which has been fighting with forces loyal to the federal government in Ethiopia since last week. The three countries deny these accusations.
The African Union Commission urged the three countries to exercise the utmost restraint and refrain from any actions or statements that would exacerbate tension and undermine peace and stability in the region.
These clashes represent the largest escalation of fighting in Ethiopia since the end of the civil war that took place between 2020 and 2022 and claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. Eritrea took up arms in support of the Ethiopian federal government in that conflict.
The Ethiopian Foreign Ministry said yesterday, Thursday, that Addis Ababa “decided to close its embassy in Asmara, in response to the direct and indirect acts of hostility and aggression practiced by Eritrea against Ethiopia.” The ministry stated in a statement on its account on the “X” platform that 10 Eritrean diplomats, whose names were not mentioned, are required to leave Ethiopia within 48 hours.
Eritrean Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel told Reuters that the expulsion of all Eritrean diplomats from Ethiopia means that the government is effectively closing the embassy in Addis Ababa. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement: “Eritrea has no choice but to respond in kind and sever all diplomatic relations with Ethiopia, despite all the negative repercussions that may result from this.”
The official Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation and two informed sources reported that the Ethiopian government also declared an Egyptian diplomat persona non grata and ordered him to leave the country within 48 hours. The state-owned Cairo news channel quoted a senior Egyptian source as saying that Cairo responded in kind by declaring the advisor of the Ethiopian embassy in Egypt persona non grata and giving him 48 hours to leave the country.
The source described the Ethiopian action against the Egyptian diplomat as unfortunate and unjustified, and said that Egypt always refuses to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nader Zaki told Reuters that the measure taken by Cairo is justified. He added that reciprocity is the basis of diplomacy.
These escalatory steps came hours after explosions were heard in the Ethiopian capital, fueling fears that the fighting could turn into a broader regional conflict. In a statement issued late yesterday, Thursday, the African Union Commission urged the three countries to “address their differences through established diplomatic channels and peaceful dialogue.”
A source connected to the opposition coalition told Reuters that the coalition carried out drone strikes on Addis Ababa, including attacks targeting the military headquarters there. If confirmed, these strikes would represent the first known drone attack by anti-government forces on Addis Ababa, which is hundreds of kilometers away from the battle lines in the Tigray, Amhara and Afar regions in the north.
Three diplomatic sources, who requested to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the issue, confirmed the explosions. Witnesses said that there was no visible damage near the military base. The Ethiopian embassy in Eritrea was reopened in 2018 as part of a rapprochement with Asmara, which led to Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed winning the Nobel Peace Prize.
The armies of the two countries fought together against the Tigray People's Liberation Front, the main party there, during the war between 2020 and 2022. But Eritrea was not a party to the peace agreement that ended the fighting in November 2022, and relations between the two countries quickly soured. The two governments exchanged criticism over the issue of access to the Red Sea, as landlocked Ethiopia insists that having a sea port is vital to its security and economy. Asmara said it feared that Addis Ababa would try to seize the port of Assab by force.
Days after the outbreak of the latest clashes, the governor of Afar, Oul Araba, told Al Jazeera that Eritrean soldiers had crossed into the northern region to join the opposition coalition attack. Meanwhile, pro-government groups said yesterday, Thursday, that federal government forces and allied armed groups have made new gains in Tigray and Afar. The National Intelligence Service banned the flying of drones over Addis Ababa. Opposition forces have not previously been known to use armed drones, but there is growing evidence that they may have some capabilities in this area.
On Tuesday, the pro-government Tigray Peace Force movement announced that it had seized drone frames and batteries from forces linked to the Tigray People's Liberation Front. Edward Bach, senior Africa analyst at risk management consultancy Verisk Maplecroft, said the opposition's ability to strike Addis Ababa would be a "political turning point," undermining any government narrative that says the capital has not been affected by the war, and diminishing a key advantage for federal government forces: their air superiority.
Federal government forces continue to advance in southern Tigray, approaching Mekele, the regional capital, while the opposition coalition has seized towns in the neighboring Afar region. Pro-government forces recaptured the town of Erbeti in Afar, which the Tigray People's Liberation Front forces had seized at the beginning of the conflict, the Tigray Peace Force announced via X, thanking the Ethiopian National Defense Forces for the "wonderful air support." Valerie Browning, one of the founders of the Afar Pastoral Development Association, told Reuters that fighting in the region had forced tens of thousands to flee their homes.
Today (Thursday), the Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced the closure of its embassy in the Eritrean capital, Asmara, and declared 10 Eritrean diplomats in Ethiopia persona non grata. In a statement, the ministry accused Eritrea of committing “direct and indirect hostile and offensive acts against Ethiopia,” according to what was reported by the Reuters news agency.
For its part, Eritrea announced this evening that it was severing its diplomatic relations with its neighbor Ethiopia, in response to Addis Ababa's expulsion of 10 Eritrean diplomats. The Eritrean Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, in a statement on the “X” platform: “Eritrea has no choice but to respond in kind and sever all diplomatic relations with Ethiopia, with all the negative repercussions that would result from that.” Since last week, Eritrea has denied allegations of its support for an opposition coalition fighting Ethiopian government forces.
The Ethiopian embassy in Eritrea was reopened in 2018 as part of the rapprochement under which Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed won the Nobel Peace Prize. The two neighboring countries have long and tense historical relations, as the Chief of Staff of the Ethiopian Army, a few days ago, accused Eritrea of supporting armed groups currently fighting against federal forces in the north of the country.
Violent clashes broke out on September 23 between Ethiopian forces and the Tigray People's Liberation Front, raising the specter of a return to the civil conflict that took place between 2020 and 2022, which killed an estimated 600,000 people. In a statement posted on Facebook, the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry announced “the expulsion of 10 Eritrean diplomats from Addis Ababa for their involvement in activities that constitute a direct threat to Ethiopian national security,” according to Agence France-Presse. The statement added that the Ethiopian embassy in the Eritrean capital, Asmara, will be closed “in response to the direct and indirect acts of hostility and provocation carried out by Eritrea towards Ethiopia.”
Eritrea gained its independence from Ethiopia in 1993 after decades of conflict, but relations with Addis Ababa did not stabilize until 2018 with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed taking office. In the civil war that took place between 2020 and 2022, Eritrea supported federal forces, but relations have deteriorated again since the end of that war, as Eritrea claims that Ethiopia, a landlocked country, covets its port of Assab.
The armed confrontations between the armed coalition led by the Tigray Liberation Front and the federal government forces in Ethiopia, about a week after their launch, are changing with talk of the front using drones in its attacks, coinciding with news of Ethiopian plans to summon thousands of soldiers. While Ethiopia did not confirm or deny these new specific attacks in the conflict, an informed Ethiopian source, speaking to Asharq Al-Awsat, questioned the validity of “targeting drones” or “summoning soldiers,” and considered these to be “allegations.”
An expert in African affairs who spoke to Asharq Al-Awsat believes that this new variable “if confirmed and the armed coalition has similar movements, it heralds the expansion of the Ethiopian war, but there remains another path to the conflict, which is the intervention of international forces to contain the escalation.” The Tigray People's Liberation Front previously took power in 1991 and ruled Ethiopia for three decades before it was marginalized by current Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed when he took office in 2018, which contributed to the outbreak of civil war. Although the “Pretoria Peace Agreement” in 2022 ended that war and established a cautious calm, the clashes renewed in late 2025. The then federal government launched drone strikes on Tigray and mobilized its forces on the borders of the region, before the new escalation that began on September 24.
The “Tigray forces” seized 3 airports in the region, and launched attacks in the Afar and Amhara regions in cooperation with their allies there since September 24, in the most dangerous escalation since the devastating war that took place between 2020 and 2022 against the forces of the federal government, before it was stopped by a peace agreement that collapsed with this new escalation. According to what Reuters reported on Thursday, citing two diplomatic sources, explosions were heard during the night in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, while a source linked to the coalition revealed that it had carried out several drone strikes on Addis Ababa. Bloomberg reported, citing diplomats familiar with the matter, that an explosion was recorded in the center of the capital, Addis Ababa, and another near the headquarters of the Ethiopian National Defense Forces.
An Ethiopian source close to the authorities said in an interview with Asharq Al-Awsat, “The Ethiopian army headquarters is exposed from all directions. If there was targeting by drones and it resulted in damage, it would be visible to the naked eye, which did not happen, and no one saw it,” stressing that “this claim and others that have been raised about targeting by drones are among the allegations and systematic campaigns.” The Ethiopian researcher in African affairs at the Center for Strategic Studies and Integration Initiatives, Musa Shekhu, said in an interview with Asharq Al-Awsat that “the possibility of expanding the scope of confrontations is not currently on the table with the news coming from the battle lines of the retreat of the rebel forces on the Amhara and Tigray fronts, and even on the Afar front there is a significant decline.”
He stressed that “the danger is not in the expansion and progress of the fronts or their retreat, but rather in the specific operations that rely on drones that penetrate the air.” He pointed out, “If it is proven that rebel drones attacked Addis Ababa, this is considered a dangerous development whose indicators appear in the expansion of operations outside Tigray, the recurrence of long-range attacks on the capital and strategic installations, or the greater involvement of regional parties, and then the crisis may turn again into a multi-front confrontation, which is the most costly scenario for all parties and for civilians in particular, and this is the first path.” The second path, according to Sheikho, is the possibility of containing the escalation and the occurrence of strong international interventions to stop the war and return to negotiation... and the “Pretoria Agreement” is the existing political framework that the African Union adheres to.
The new variable, the opposition's use of drones since the 2020 conflict, coincides with Ethiopian plans to withdraw thousands of soldiers from neighboring Somalia, as the escalation of internal fighting pushes Abiy Ahmed's government to redirect its military resources towards an expanding conflict with rebel groups, according to Bloomberg. It is expected that more than 3,000 Ethiopian soldiers will begin withdrawal in the coming days or weeks, and Ethiopia previously took a similar step during the Tigray conflict in 2020, when it withdrew thousands of soldiers from Somalia to participate in government military operations, according to the same source. Days before the Tigray attacks, 7 groups opposed to the federal government in different regions of the country, including the Tigray People's Liberation Front, the Fano militias in Amhara, and the Oromo Liberation Army, announced an alliance aimed at overthrowing the ruling authority in Addis Ababa. Sheikho believes that “the step also carries another indication, which is that the government is dealing with the internal situation as a major security priority that deserves to reconsider the deployment of its forces outside the borders,” believing that its return could give the federal leadership greater flexibility in distributing its forces.
