Eritrea Crosses Into Ethiopia as Egypt’s Navy Moves: Abiy’s War Is Turning Against Him

On October 4, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi hosted Eritrea’s Isaias Afwerki, Somalia’s Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and Sudan’s army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan at New Alamein on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast. Their joint declaration said control of the Red Sea should remain with the coastal states and rejected unilateral measures affecting Egypt’s and Sudan’s Nile water. We set out at the time why that meeting was a warning to Abiy that an attack on Eritrea would mean fighting four states.

Abiy answered the next day. Sworn in on October 5 for a new five-year term that runs to 2031, he told parliament that “based on the principle of give and take, we will work diligently to ensure that Ethiopia has an outlet to the sea,” Al Jazeera reported. He accused unnamed outside powers of working to keep Ethiopia away from the sea and promised that this would change. Ethiopia has also announced plans for three more hydropower dams on the Blue Nile, on top of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) that Egypt regards as a threat to its survival.

The fighting began on September 23, when seven armed and political groups, the TPLF among them, announced an alliance to remove Abiy’s government. Tigrayan forces pushed into the neighbouring Afar and Amhara regions; TPLF vice-president Amanuel Assefa said “there is fighting everywhere,” and the army claimed it had killed 272 Tigrayan fighters in Amhara. Then the TPLF withdrew from Mekelle and moved its administration elsewhere, and on October 3 federal troops and allied militias entered the city.

A rebel movement that hands over its own capital without resistance is drawing an army in, and that is what the TPLF did. Since Abiy’s speech, videos circulating online show Tigrayan fighters capturing Ethiopian soldiers and bringing down Ethiopian army drones, a capability they had not shown earlier in this round. One clip shows a Tigrayan fighter filming himself in Mekelle after, he says, federal forces were driven out. The videos cannot be independently verified, and federal control of the city has not been formally reversed. But they show the direction of the fighting. At the same time, Fano militias in Amhara and Oromo insurgents have pressed forward on their own fronts, and Fano units are reported to be about 160 km from Addis Ababa.

The army that entered Mekelle came with Chinese-made artillery and armoured vehicles. It is falling back because it has understood two things. It is not fighting a militia alone; it is fighting an army standing behind a militia. And the deeper it goes into Tigray, the easier it becomes for Fano and the Oromo fighters to cut its supply lines behind it.

The same logic is playing out in Yemen. If government forces close the ring around the Houthi units besieging Taiz, those units face slaughter, which is why Taiz will decide the war. An Ethiopian army stretched deep inside Tigray, with hostile forces closing on its rear, faces the same trap. It is pulling back fast to avoid that fate.

The most serious development came from the north. According to Asharq Al-Awsat, Eritrean forces crossed the border and took up positions about 40 km inside Ethiopia, with some units moving on toward Mekelle. On October 7, residents of Adigrat, a town on the road from the border to Mekelle, told Reuters they had seen Eritrean soldiers there, Arab News reported. An analyst with the conflict monitor ACLED said the troops had crossed at Zalambessa, and Ethiopian drones were reported to have struck vehicles carrying Eritrean soldiers.

Everyone had expected the opposite: an Ethiopian army flush with victory in Mekelle rolling on toward the Eritrean border. Instead Eritrea crossed first, and it did so straight after Abiy’s sea pledge. Relations had already collapsed. On October 2 Ethiopia closed its embassy in Asmara and expelled ten Eritrean diplomats, Eritrea broke off diplomatic relations, and Ethiopia and Egypt expelled each other’s diplomats.

What makes the crossing remarkable is who is not resisting it. Eritrea and the TPLF fought each other with great bitterness in the 2020-2022 war. Today Eritrean units can advance 40 km into Tigray while Tigrayan forces turn their guns on the federal army. Addis Ababa accuses Egypt, Eritrea and Sudan of backing the rebel alliance; all three deny it.

This is why Egypt cannot treat the border as someone else’s business. Eritrea is the state Egypt has tied itself to most closely in the Horn of Africa. If Ethiopia strikes Eritrea, Egypt will have to intervene. That moment is not far off.

Websites and social media accounts that track the region have reported Egyptian naval units moving in the Red Sea. Nobody has said where they are going. It may be an exercise. It may be a squadron taking station off the Eritrean coast, ready to strike Ethiopian forces if Abiy is reckless enough to move on Eritrea. It may be heading toward the Houthis, since both fronts are active. Egypt has not announced anything.

What is on record already points south. Egypt’s southern fleet, led by one of its two French-built Mistral helicopter carriers, is deployed off the Horn of Africa near the Bab al-Mandeb strait, according to The National. Egypt has about 15,000 troops in Somalia, a number expected to grow to around 30,000, and naval and army sites in Eritrea. Under agreements reported in December 2025, Egypt is upgrading Eritrea’s port of Assab and Djibouti’s Doraleh so that its destroyers, submarines and carriers can refuel and resupply there. Egypt now has a military footprint in four of Ethiopia’s neighbours.

Abiy is not without friends. On October 6, Israel’s foreign minister Gideon Saar called his Ethiopian counterpart, Gedion Timothewos, and stressed Ethiopia’s unity and stability. Israel’s main focus is Iran, where US media have reported renewed activity at nuclear sites Israel struck earlier, yet it is clearly determined that the Ethiopian army should not fall.

The reason is the Red Sea. Israel became the first state to recognise Somaliland, the breakaway region of Somalia, in December 2025, and Le Monde has reported military-related construction at Berbera airport. An Ethiopia with its own outlet on the Red Sea, coordinating with an Israeli presence in Somaliland, would create an Israeli-Ethiopian axis on the sea that Egypt depends on for Suez Canal revenue. Israel is short of manpower for any distant front; an Ethiopian army would supply what it lacks. Israeli outlets such as Nziv have already described the Egypt-Eritrea-Somalia-Sudan grouping as a bloc aimed at Israel, though Israel has no border and no declared stake in the region. In truth Israel wants to reach the Red Sea’s southern shore alongside Abiy’s army, and Abiy’s government has put itself at Israel’s disposal.

Washington has taken sides too. In Semafor, former US official Cameron Hudson wrote that “this time, Washington has picked a side,” pointing to a $5 billion sale of ten Boeing aircraft to Ethiopian Airlines announced on October 1 as proof that Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s commercial diplomacy outranks peacemaking. The State Department has urged Ethiopia and Eritrea to exercise restraint. A regional coalition is forming to keep Abiy standing, and Egypt opposes it. The coming weeks will show how firm that opposition is: whether Cairo lets Ethiopia push into Eritrea, or watches Eritrea teach the Ethiopian army a lesson.

Some expect Washington to broker a settlement between Asmara and Addis Ababa. That will not happen, for two reasons.

The first is betrayal. Isaias Afwerki allied with Abiy against the TPLF. Abiy won the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize for making peace with Eritrea, then turned on Isaias. The second is the sea. When Abiy promises to reach the Red Sea, he does not mean Somalia. The nearest and most important port for Ethiopia is Assab, in Eritrea. Every time Abiy renews that pledge, he tells Asmara that Ethiopia cannot be trusted.

The war is also a sign of something larger: the breakdown of the international order. In the Horn of Africa today the strong try to eat the weak. Ethiopia’s army set out to swallow the armed movements in its north; Eritrea, which once fought the Tigrayans alongside Abiy, now stands with them against him.