TPLF Says Withdrew Troops From Ethiopia’s Amhara, Afar, to Meet Elusive Eritrean Offensive

The TPLF said on Sunday it was withdrawing its forces from northern Amhara and western Afar in order to counter what it claims is a joint offensive being led by Eritrea.

In a statement posted on Twitter on Sunday, TPLF spokesperson Getachew Reda claimed that the Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF) had lost “tens of thousands of troops and materiel” attempting to take back North Wollo, a region of northern Amhara the TPLF invaded in late August.

“Its repeated efforts to make so much as [a] small dent in our defense lines fizzled out 3 days ago with our forces managing to pursue retreating enemy units all the way to the outskirts of Waldiya,” Getachew claimed.

“Now that [the] Abiy Regime's repeated counter-offensives in this front have been effectively thwarted and the regime has now fully handed over its resources to Isaias Afeworki, our forces are being redeployed to better confront head-on threats elsewhere and reverse the second round of genocidal campaign waged by the twin tyrants in the Horn.”

A user-generated map of the Ethiopian conflict on September 1, 2022, shows the borders of Tigray and surrounding states, as well as Eritrea (blue) and Sudan (gre3n), the areas of Amhara and Afar occupied by the TPLF (orange,) and the areas of western Tigray occupied by Ethiopian federal troops (yellow).

The TPLF launched its attack on Amhara and Afar on August 24, and a week later on August 31, claimed that Eritrea had invaded Tigray “in four directions” in conjunction with an ENDF offensive from western parts of Tigray it has long occupied. Eritrea fought alongside Ethiopia in the first round of the war, from November 2020 until December 2021, having recently forged an alliance after ending a 20-year-long war that had been started by the TPLF in 1998, when it was still the ruling party in Ethiopia.

Two weeks later, Getachew claimed that “tens of thousands of Eritreans and Ethiopians along with numerous commanders have been killed in engagements the last few days in the south and western fronts.” In another statement carried by Mekelle-based news station Dimtsi Weyane on October 1, the TPLF claimed the group had killed or wounded 93,000 Ethiopian and Eritrean troops since August 24.

However, to date, the TPLF’s claims remain the only source of information about the supposed Eritrean offensive aside from Mike Hammer, the US special envoy for the Horn of Africa, who claimed the US has been “tracking Eritrean troop movements across the border.” As Sputnik has reported, the US has secretly supported the TPLF’s war, even while posturing as a neutral actor interested in peace.

Last week, satellite photos of the Eritrea-Tigray border region were published by Maxar, having been taken in the previous days. While Western media reports largely attempted to frame the images as bolstering the TPLF’s claims about an Eritrean invasion, in reality, the photographs disprove the group’s claims.

For example, there are several published photos of Eritrean artillery pieces and tanks positioned in defensive locations just inside Eritrea, near the border. Other photos, such as those near the town of Sheraro, which the TPLF claimed the Eritreans had seized, show lines of buses and other vehicles, but no weaponry of any kind and no sign of the epic battles described by Getachew, with their “tens of thousands” of fallen. None of the photos show the “5 divisions fully equipped with mechanized support” that the TPLF has claimed Eritrea sent into Tigray.

The conflict first began in November 2020, when the TPLF rebelled after it lost its dominant position when a new government was formed by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, the country’s first Oromo leader. TPLF forces ambushed ENDF troops sent to Mekelle to restore order, and the TPLF launched an offensive toward Addis Ababa the following year, which was eventually repulsed. A ceasefire between the TPLF and ENDF largely held between December 2021 and August 2022, although the TPLF did invade Afar in January and faced off against Afar Special Forces before withdrawing in March.

Nearly two years of conflict have created a massive humanitarian crisis, which has been compounded by a terrible drought plaguing much of the Horn of Africa. Around 10 million Ethiopians require food assistance, according to the United Nations, most of them in Tigray, Afar, and Somali states.