Ethiopia just retook a key Tigray town and the rebel advance has stalled
3 days ago · 28 September 2026Share
Ethiopian soldiers marching in a military parade in 2019. File photo. Office of the Prime Minister - Ethiopia · Public domain
Ethiopia's government just won back a key town in Tigray.
And a week ago, it was losing ground fast.
So what changed? Government troops and an allied militia pushed into Alamata a few hours ago and took it back.
Here's how we know. A pro-government militia called the Tigrai Peace Force posted video on Facebook. It shows soldiers marching through the streets, waving Ethiopian flags.
But nobody's fully confirmed it yet. Two people with direct knowledge told Reuters the town had fallen. A third said troops had gone in, but it wasn't clear yet if they controlled the whole place. A conflict monitor called ACLED has partly backed up the claim.
Now, why does this town matter so much?
Alamata sits about 120 kilometres south of Mekelle, Tigray's capital. It's a hub for troops, food and fuel, right near the border with Amhara. It changed hands again and again during the last Tigray war. And taking it opens the road north, straight toward Mekelle.
One person told Al Jazeera Arabic the army isn't stopping there. It's already pushing toward two more towns deeper into Tigray, Mekhoni and Maychew.
So here's the twist. Five days ago, it was the rebels on the move.
Tigray's TPLF launched an offensive into the Afar and Amhara regions, as part of a new coalition of seven armed groups trying to bring down the government. That coalition includes the TPLF, an Amhara group called Fano, the Oromo Liberation Army, and four smaller forces.
TPLF says this is a defensive war, forced on it by the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.
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The Tigray Escarpment in Ethiopia. File photo. Rod Waddington from Kergunyah, Australia · CC BY-SA 2.0
And until today, the TPLF side was winning ground. Just a day ago, TPLF-aligned fighters took a town in Afar called Erebti, and were pushing toward another one about 100 kilometres further on. The goal there is to cut the supply routes running in from Djibouti, which is where most of Ethiopia's imports, including fuel, come from. One humanitarian source estimates at least 150,000 people have already been forced from their homes in Afar, though nobody can confirm the real number yet.
The war has hit the airwaves too. Tigray's own TV station, Tigrai TV, had its headquarters hit by a drone a day ago. The station employs about 400 people. It went off air, but nobody was hurt. The government had already suspended it a week before the strike. The UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, says he's troubled by reports of drones being used and civilians getting hurt.
Phone and internet networks across Tigray have been down since Friday. Four people told Reuters the TPLF ordered that shutdown itself. The TPLF hasn't said anything about that.
Now here's where it gets bigger than just two sides.
Ethiopia's army chief, Field Marshal Birhanu Jula, accused Eritrea, Sudan and Egypt a day ago of backing the rebels. Sudan's military said that's baseless, and said it's actually Ethiopia backing a rival Sudanese paramilitary group with drones and training. Eritrea has denied helping the TPLF before, and denies it again now. Egypt hasn't responded.
Away from Alamata, Ethiopia's military says it killed 272 TPLF fighters and wounded 260 more in a separate fight in North Wollo four days ago. Those numbers haven't been verified. Fano fighters, allied with the TPLF, say they captured two Ethiopian army colonels in that same area three days ago.
And here's why any of this matters so much. The last Tigray war killed an estimated 600,000 people. It only ended less than four years ago, in November 2022, with a peace deal signed in Pretoria.
Five days of new fighting have already torn through that deal.
So is Alamata actually secure? Not confirmed. Will the government's push keep going north? Not known. What will the TPLF do next? Nobody's said.
One thing is certain. The momentum in this war has flipped once this week already. It can flip again.
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