On Tuesday the dissident faction, which Tsadkan accused of seeking an alliance with Eritrea, seized control of the northern town of Adigrat.
Getachew Reda, the head of Tigray's interim administration, asked the government for support against the dissidents, who deny ties to Eritrea. “There is clear antagonism between Ethiopia and Eritrea,” Getachew told a news conference on Monday. “What concerns me is the Tigray people may again become victims of a war they don't believe in.”
Ethiopia's federal government has not commented on the tensions. Eritrea's information minister dismissed Tsadkan's warnings as “warmongering psychosis”.
However, Eritrea ordered a nationwide military mobilisation in mid-February, according to UK-based Human Rights Concern — Eritrea.
And Ethiopia deployed troops towards the Eritrean border this month, two diplomatic sources and two Tigrayan officials told Reuters, asking not to be named due to the sensitivity of the situation.
Reuters could not independently verify these developments. Eritrean and Ethiopian government spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment.
Payton Knopf and Alexander Rondos, the former US and EU envoys to the region, said the prospects of a new war are real. “The deterioration of the political and security situation in Tigray is dry tinder waiting for a match,” they wrote in an essay for US publication Foreign Policy on Wednesday.
Relations between Ethiopia and Eritrea have long been fraught. Eritrea broke away from Ethiopia in 1993 after a 30-year fight for independence. The neighbours then fought a 1998-2000 border war. They remained formally at war until 2018, when Abiy and Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki agreed to normalise ties. Eritrean troops even supported Ethiopian federal forces against TPLF-led rebels during the Tigray civil war.
But the exclusion of Eritrea from subsequent peace negotiations once again chilled relations. Eritrean officials have bristled at repeated public declarations by Abiy since 2023 that landlocked Ethiopia has a right to sea access, which some analysts view as an implicit threat of military action against Eritrea, which lies on the Red Sea.
Last October Eritrea, an authoritarian and insular state, signed a security pact with Egypt and Somalia that was widely seen as aimed at countering Ethiopia's potential expansionist ambitions.
**Reuters**