Eritrea just cut all ties with Ethiopia and a war could be reigniting
1 hour ago · 2 October 2026Share
Offices of the Ethiopian Federal Government Ministry of Finance and Economic Development in Addis Ababa.Dvermeirre · CC BY-SA 4.0
Eritrea has just cut every diplomatic tie it has with Ethiopia.
And this was the partnership that won Ethiopia's prime minister a Nobel Peace Prize.
Eritrea's Foreign Ministry made the announcement a few hours ago. And it was a direct reply to something Ethiopia did the same day.
Ethiopia had closed its own embassy in Asmara, Eritrea's capital. It also threw out ten Eritrean officials from Addis Ababa.
Those ten included Eritrea's chargé d'affaires, plus staff who worked with the African Union. Ethiopia gave them 48 hours to leave the country.
Why? Ethiopia says they were involved in activities that posed a direct threat to its national security. It says that breaks the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.
So Eritrea's Foreign Ministry says quote "Eritrea has no option but to reciprocate in kind and sever all diplomatic ties with Ethiopia".
In plain terms: both embassies are shut. There is no formal relationship left between these two countries.
So what actually kicked this off? A night of explosions in Addis Ababa.
Three diplomatic contacts confirmed hearing them. But witnesses say there was no visible damage near the military base most people assumed was the target.
A source linked to an opposition alliance fighting Ethiopia's federal government told Reuters it had carried out several drone strikes in the capital. Some, it says, were aimed at military headquarters.
But here's the thing. That's one side of a week-old civil war talking. Nobody has confirmed what was actually hit, or if anything was hit at all.
Ethiopia's federal government blames three countries for backing that opposition alliance: Eritrea, Sudan and Egypt. The alliance is led by the Tigray People's Liberation Front, and it has been fighting Ethiopian troops for a week now.
All three accused countries say it isn't true.
But the strongest sign of Eritrean involvement isn't coming from Addis Ababa's government at all. It's coming from inside Ethiopia itself.
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A map of Ethiopia and Eritrea.XTheBedrockX · CC BY-SA 4.0
Haji Awol Arba runs Ethiopia's northern Afar region. He told Al Jazeera that Eritrean soldiers have crossed into Afar to fight alongside the opposition alliance.
So a regional Ethiopian official, not the foreign ministry, is the one saying Eritrean troops are now on Ethiopian soil.
Eritrea tells it completely differently. Its Foreign Ministry calls Ethiopia's accusations astounding. It says Ethiopia is the one pushing hostility, and accuses Addis Ababa of waging war to get access to the Red Sea.
Eritrea doesn't have a coastline dispute of its own here. But Ethiopia lost its sea access when Eritrea became independent in 1993, and it has wanted a reliable route to the sea ever since.
And here's the twist. These two countries were allies just four years ago.
Eritrean troops fought next to Ethiopia's federal army against Tigray forces in the 2020 to 2022 civil war. That war killed an estimated 600,000 people.
But Eritrea got left out of the Pretoria peace deal that ended it in November 2022. Relations between Asmara and Addis Ababa went sour almost straight away.
And that alliance was itself a turnaround. Ethiopia's embassy in Asmara only reopened in 2018, after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed made peace with Eritrea. That ended two decades of severed ties that had followed the 1998 to 2000 border war.
That peace deal is what won Abiy Ahmed the Nobel Peace Prize, the year after.
Even now, Ethiopia's Foreign Ministry says it still values its historical, cultural and people-to-people ties with Eritrea. It says it's still committed to solving this peacefully.
So Ethiopia is shutting the door, while saying it would rather not have to.
And the fighting all of this sits inside is already the worst Ethiopia has seen since its last civil war ended. Clashes are spreading across Tigray, Afar and Amhara, the same three regions hit hardest the last time.
So what don't we know? Whether Ethiopia and Eritrea are now heading towards fighting each other directly, or whether Eritrea stays on the sidelines, just backing the TPLF-led alliance. Nobody has said how far Eritrean military involvement actually goes. And nobody knows if other regional powers will start sending more support to either side.
Four years ago, these two countries fought the same war side by side. Now they're formally strangers again.
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