Tigray forces took over Alula Aba Nega Airport in Mekelle after a decisive battle, and Ethiopian Airlines suspended flights to the city and two other destinations as the region’s armed power struggle sharpened again.
Who Holds the Ground
An employee at the airport said the takeover hit ordinary workers first. “While we were on our way to the airport for work, our supervisor called the driver and told him that Tigray forces had taken over the airport. Since there were no flights, he told us to return home,” the employee said. That’s the human cost of armed authority in one blunt message: show up for work, then turn around because armed men now control the gate.
A foreign security source based in Ethiopia confirmed the information. Flight Radar, an air traffic tracker, showed that Wednesday morning’s flight between Mekelle and the federal capital, Addis Ababa, had been cancelled. Ethiopian Airlines said in a statement, “Ethiopian Airlines has temporarily suspended flights to Mekelle, Axum and Shire effective today, due to the current situation in the Tigray region.”
A small number of federal police guard the airport, and their condition was unknown. The article gives no sign that those officers, or the people who depend on the airport, had any say in the decisions being made above them. The machinery of control moved first. Everyone else adjusted.
The Power Struggle Above
The Tigray People’s Liberation Front, which controls the region, seized the airport after the battle. On Sunday, the TPLF was announced as a member of a new alliance of anti-government armed groups from across the country. Ethiopia faces a myriad of insurgencies, including in its most populous regions, Oromia and Amhara.
The TPLF ruled the whole of Ethiopia from 1991 to 2018 before being sidelined with the rise of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, eventually triggering the civil war. That history matters because it shows how state power in Ethiopia has shifted between competing elites and armed blocs, while people in the regions keep living with the consequences.
The federal government has since launched multiple drone strikes in Tigray and massed troops at the regional border. It also has a significant military advantage, having ramped up production of military drones since the last conflict. The state’s answer to instability remains the same old language of force, surveillance, and hardware.
What the War Left Behind
The TPLF fought a devastating civil war with the federal government in 2020-2022 that killed some 600,000 people, according to African Union estimates. The Pretoria Peace Agreement ended the war and maintained an uneasy calm until late 2025, when clashes resumed. That calm didn’t mean peace for people on the ground. It meant a pause in open fire while the underlying domination stayed intact.
The region has not recovered from the last war, with around one million people still displaced and many aspects of the peace agreement still unfulfilled. Those numbers sit underneath every announcement from the armed actors and the federal authorities. Displacement doesn’t stop because a statement gets issued. It lingers, unpaid and unresolved.
Rights groups have accused the TPLF of a campaign of forced recruitment this year as it prepares for renewed conflict. Ethiopian authorities have accused the TPLF of allying with neighbouring Eritrea, as well as Ethiopian armed groups. Each side throws accusations across the barricades while the people caught between them face the same old squeeze: conscription, displacement, cancelled flights, and the threat of more strikes.
The airport seizure is not just a military event. It’s another reminder that regional life can be shut down by forces competing for control, while workers are sent home and civilians are left to absorb the fallout. The airport gates changed hands. The hierarchy didn’t.