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Tigrayan forces took control of Alula Aba Nega Airport in the regional capital of Mekelle from a small contingent of federal police during the night of 22 to 23 September 2026, according to three local sources who spoke to Reuters. An airport employee described being turned back while heading to work, telling AFP that a supervisor had informed the driver the facility had been seized by Tigray forces and that staff should return home since no flights were operating. A foreign security source based in Ethiopia confirmed the takeover to AFP, while residents separately described the events to the BBC as the situation unfolded. The condition of the federal police who had been guarding the site remained unknown on Wednesday, Reuters reported.
Ethiopian Airlines announced the temporary suspension of all flights to Mekelle as well as the northern airports in Axum and Shire, citing the current situation in the Tigray region in a statement posted on social media. The carrier apologised for the inconvenience to customers and said it would provide updates when operations could resume, according to the airline’s Telegram channel. Flight tracking data from Flightradar24 showed that Wednesday morning’s scheduled service between Mekelle and Addis Ababa had been cancelled, Al Jazeera reported. The airline had been the primary operator connecting the region to the Ethiopian capital.
The airport seizure follows the Tigray People’s Liberation Front’s announcement on Sunday that it had formed an alliance with six other armed groups from across Ethiopia with the aim of overthrowing Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government, a development cited by multiple outlets including Al Jazeera. The TPLF had fought a two-year civil war against federal forces from 2020 to 2022 that African Union estimates say killed approximately 600,000 people before the Pretoria Agreement ended the conflict in November 2022. Relations between the TPLF and the federal government have deteriorated steadily since the peace deal, with each side accusing the other of violations, according to a Reuters assessment.
Tigrayan forces assumed control of the regional government in May from an interim administration that had been established under the terms of the Pretoria Agreement, Reuters reported. Sporadic clashes in recent months had already heightened fears of a return to full-scale war in the region, an AFP dispatch noted. The latest moves come against a backdrop of multiple insurgencies challenging the federal authorities in other parts of the country, including in Oromia and Amhara, according to regional security analyses published by Ahram Online.
Separate reports indicated that fighting had also broken out between Tigrayan forces and federal troops in parts of the neighbouring Afar region, with an NGO source telling Euronews that clashes began late on Tuesday in areas such as Abala and Erebti. A former senior TPLF official claimed the group had taken several Afar localities including Berhale, Megale and Dalul while federal forces were retreating, though these accounts could not be independently verified. The developments suggest a broadening of the confrontation beyond Tigray itself, as described in contemporaneous dispatches from Reuters and AFP.
The Alula Aba Nega Airport, located about 10 kilometres southeast of Mekelle, had served as the main aviation gateway for the Tigray region prior to the seizure, with Ethiopian Airlines operating regular connections to Addis Ababa, Wikipedia entries on the facility note. Built in the late 1990s to replace an older airfield closer to the city, the airport features a single asphalt runway more than 3,600 metres long capable of handling larger aircraft. Its control had been a point of strategic contention during the earlier civil war, when both sides vied for dominance over air infrastructure in the north, according to archived conflict reporting.
