Red Sea Access Dispute Spills Over: Ethiopia and Eritrea Trade 'Aggression' Accusations as Tigray Conflict Edges Toward Cross-Border War

Ethiopia and Eritrea on Friday accused each other of waging 'an extraordinary war of aggression,' and with the two countries having severed diplomatic relations only days earlier, a conflict that was originally an internal Ethiopian matter in Tigray is rapidly escalating into a cross-border war.

According to a report by France 24 citing AFP, an anonymous foreign security source estimated that 5,000 to 8,000 Eritrean soldiers are currently deployed in Tigray, supporting the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), which launched an offensive against federal forces last month. The figure could not be independently verified, and neither government responded to AFP's requests for comment.

Ethiopian Foreign Minister Gedion Timotheos, in a letter to diplomats, characterized Eritrea's actions as 'a flagrant act of aggression that has triggered Ethiopia's inherent right of self-defense.' Eritrea's Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel struck back on X, saying Eritrea's regime was suffering from Ethiopia's 'unwarranted war of aggression.'

Over the past week, Ethiopian forces have advanced significantly in Tigray, recapturing the TPLF's 'capital' Mekelle, and Ethiopian Airlines announced it would resume flights to the city on October 11. At the same time, federal forces have carried out intense drone strikes against Eritrean troops deployed inside the country — according to AFP citing conflict monitors and eyewitnesses, Eritrean troops were spotted in recent days in Adigrat and subsequently became targets of Ethiopian drones.

Eyewitnesses told AFP on Friday that the TPLF has lost the two cities of Shire and Adigrat. An aid worker in Shire said TPLF fighters and local administrators had withdrawn on Wednesday, with 'looters active in the town, four people killed and 11 injured in clashes linked to looting,' adding that pro-government forces had not yet entered Shire. According to a Tigray official from a TPLF dissident faction, the rebels are retreating toward the border town of Sheraro, near Eritrea.

Kjetil Tronvoll, a regional specialist at Oslo New University College, told AFP that the TPLF is 'shrinking, low on morale, and full of grievances against its leaders,' and that 'many are defecting and returning to their villages.' But he also warned: 'I don't think he (Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed) will stop at the border.'

The geopolitical undercurrent of this conflict is a maritime corridor. Landlocked Ethiopia has repeatedly insisted on its right to direct sea access; Eritrea regards this as a threat of invasion aimed at seizing its port of Assab. Gebremeskel did not mince words: 'The hysterical obsession with the Red Sea must be viewed in light of the prior designs to launch an invasion against Eritrea.'

This structural asymmetry — a landlocked great power of more than 120 million people set against a small state of roughly 3.6 million that sits astride the southern end of the Red Sea — makes any rhetoric from the Abiy government about 'sea-access rights' sound in Asmara like the prelude to military action. The two countries fought a brutal border war from 1998 to 2000 after Eritrea's independence from Ethiopia in 1993.

The relationship turned a corner following Abiy's rise to power in 2018; ties warmed, and Eritrea fought alongside Ethiopia against the TPLF during Ethiopia's civil war from 2020 to 2022. But after that war ended, bilateral relations deteriorated sharply — Eritrea was dissatisfied with the ceasefire arrangements and remained wary that the Abiy government would turn the fighting toward its own territory. Now, with Ethiopian forces driving the TPLF out of northern Tigray and pressing toward the Eritrean border, the prospect Tronvoll warned of — not stopping at the border — is shifting from speculation to an observable military posture.

There remains considerable uncertainty over how far the TPLF has actually been pushed back, the true extent of Eritrean forces' involvement, and whether this conflict will cross the border and escalate into an open cross-border war.