Eritrea Sends Troops Into Ethiopia's Tigray, Addis Ababa Calls It Invasion

Ethiopia's Minister of Government Communication, Enatalem Melese, said Eritrean forces operating inside Tigray must leave Ethiopian territory without delay, according to a statement reported by the Horn Review on October 7, 2026, which cited remarks he made to Bloomberg. The statement amounts to an official Ethiopian accusation that Eritrean troops have entered the country, though Eritrea has not framed events the same way.

What witnesses reported

At least two residents of Adigrat, a town roughly 25 kilometres south of the Eritrea-Ethiopia border in Tigray, said they saw dozens of soldiers in off-white camouflage uniforms drive through the town in two trucks on Wednesday, October 7, according to a report by Al Jazeera. The residents identified the uniforms as Eritrean. A third resident said relatives had also seen the troops. The accounts could not be independently verified.

If confirmed, it would be the first time Eritrean forces have been sighted inside Ethiopian territory since fighting resumed in the north of the country on September 23, 2026, Al Jazeera reported.

Conflicting accounts from the two governments

Gebreigziabher Beyene, commander of the Tigray Peace Force, a militia fighting alongside Ethiopia's federal army, said Eritrean soldiers had crossed the border with heavy weapons and were being targeted by drone strikes.

Eritrea's Information Minister, Yemane Meskel, did not deny that Eritrean troops had crossed the border but rejected Ethiopia's framing of the events. According to Al Jazeera's report, he said Addis Ababa was presenting what he called an inaccurate self-defense narrative to disguise what he described as Ethiopian aggression.

How the crisis escalated

The current fighting traces back to September 23, 2026, when a coalition calling itself the Ethiopian Peoples' Forces Coalition for Survival launched coordinated attacks on the Ethiopian National Defense Force across the Tigray, Afar and Amhara regions, according to a Wikipedia summary of the offensive. The coalition includes the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), the Amhara militia Fano, and the Oromo Liberation Army.

Rebel forces seized airports in Axum, Shire and Mekelle on the first day of the offensive. The Tigray Peace Force later claimed to have captured the town of Alamata on September 28, reporting that at least 52 civilians were killed there, though that figure has not been independently confirmed.

Federal forces subsequently regained momentum, retaking Mekelle, Tigray's regional capital, by October 3-4 as TPLF fighters withdrew. The Horn Review reported that TPLF leadership subsequently fled toward Eritrean territory, which Addis Ababa has cited as part of its case that Eritrea is now directly involved in the fighting.

Diplomatic ties severed

On October 1, Ethiopia ordered the closure of Eritrea's embassy in Addis Ababa and declared ten Eritrean diplomats persona non grata, giving them 48 hours to leave, after accusing Eritrea of hostile actions, both direct and indirect, according to Borkena. Eritrea responded the same day by severing diplomatic relations with Ethiopia entirely.

The same period saw a separate diplomatic rupture between Ethiopia and Egypt: Addis Ababa declared an Egyptian diplomat persona non grata, and Cairo expelled an Ethiopian embassy counsellor in response, Borkena reported. Ethiopian federal authorities have accused both Eritrea and Egypt of supporting the armed groups fighting the government, allegations both countries deny.

Regional and international response

The African Union Commission said on October 1 that it was following the tensions between Ethiopia, Eritrea and Egypt closely and called on all three states to exercise strong restraint, preserve diplomatic channels and resolve differences through dialogue, according to the Commission's published statement. The AU offered to help facilitate talks but said this would depend on consultation with the countries involved.

What remains unconfirmed

Several details of the escalation remain unverified by independent sources. Earlier in the crisis, open-source monitoring accounts reported that Eritrean forces had already crossed into Ethiopia's Afar region, according to the Wikipedia summary of the offensive; these reports have not been confirmed independently. Exact numbers of Eritrean troops inside Ethiopia, and the extent of their deployment beyond Adigrat, have not been established.

Ethiopia's government has reported 272 of its soldiers killed and 260 wounded in the fighting since September 23, according to figures cited in the Wikipedia account of the offensive; these figures have not been independently verified and no equivalent Eritrean casualty figures have been published.