Ethiopia's federal government has issued a sharp warning that forces loyal to the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) are preparing a military offensive against Addis Ababa within days, raising fears of a return to one of Africa's deadliest recent conflicts. In an editorial published Thursday in Al Jazeera, Ethiopia's intelligence chief Redwan Hussein and East African Affairs Minister Getachew Reda — himself a former Tigrayan rebel leader — accused the TPLF of coordinating with neighbouring Eritrea and rebel forces from the Amhara region to launch an imminent attack. The officials claimed that meetings between Eritrean officials and TPLF figures had taken place in the Eritrean capital Asmara, the Tigrayan capital Mekelle, and Sudan, calling the alleged alliance one "cobbled together in semi-public meetings" designed to undermine the 2022 Pretoria peace agreement.

The TPLF flatly rejected the accusations. The group's leader Debretsion Gebremichael, who heads both the party and the Tigray region, called the federal government's claims "totally false" and counter-accused Addis Ababa of fabricating a pretext to launch a new war. The denial underscores the deep mutual distrust that has persisted since the Pretoria accord ended a devastating two-year civil war estimated to have killed around 600,000 people. Tigray is a region of roughly six million people in northern Ethiopia, bordering Eritrea, and was the stronghold of the TPLF during the decades it dominated Ethiopian national politics.

The TPLF ruled all of Ethiopia for nearly 30 years before Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed came to power in 2018. Relations deteriorated sharply, and war broke out in November 2020. Although the Pretoria peace deal halted the fighting in late 2022, the truce has been under increasing strain. The federal government banned the TPLF from political activity last year, but the party retains its own military forces and effective control of Tigray. Tensions sharpened further in April when the TPLF reinstated a regional parliament that Addis Ababa deemed illegitimate, and the federal editorial accused the group of having dismantled the agreed interim administration in "clear violation" of the peace deal. Tigray did not participate in the national elections held on June 1.

In an effort to de-escalate, former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, the African Union's designated mediator for the conflict, travelled to Tigray on Thursday and met with Debretsion to discuss ways of preventing a resumption of hostilities. The situation is further complicated by Ethiopia's tense relations with Sudan, which has been engulfed in its own civil war since 2023 and exchanged territorial accusations with Addis Ababa as recently as May. The federal editorial warned that "a resumption of hostilities would be dangerous and would have serious regional consequences" and called on all parties with influence over the TPLF and its alleged backers in Asmara to apply maximum pressure for restraint. With Tigray financially weakened and around one million people still displaced from the last war, the stakes of any renewed conflict remain extraordinarily high.