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A deadly drone strike hit Ethiopia’s Tigray region, according to statements from dissident regional authorities on Saturday.
The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) announced via Facebook that a drone struck troops early Friday outside Shiraro, near the Eritrean border.
The TPLF reported that the attack caused loss of life, bodily injuries, and property damage to members of the Tigray Army during their daily routines, though they withheld specific casualty figures.
The TPLF accused the federal administration of escalating tensions and raising fears of a renewed war because the Ethiopian government maintains sole access to drones in the region.
The federal army has not yet responded to requests for comment.
The strike marks a dangerous escalation for a region still recovering from a devastating civil war between 2020 and 2022.
That conflict, fought between the Ethiopian government and the TPLF, resulted in more than 600,000 deaths according to African Union estimates.
Although a peace deal officially ended the war, the parties never fully implemented the agreement, and tensions have mounted again in recent months.
The Ethiopian government previously used drones extensively during the civil war and continues to deploy them against ongoing insurgencies in the neighbouring Amhara and Oromia regions.
Just this past January, two separate drone strikes hit Tigray and killed one person.
Political and economic stability has steadily eroded in Tigray, which housed some six million people before the war.
The TPLF effectively ruled Ethiopia for nearly 30 years until Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed rose to power in 2018.
While Abiy’s government barred the TPLF from political activity last year, the group remains all-powerful in Tigray and maintains its own military forces.
Relations soured further in April when Tigray reinstated a local parliament that federal authorities deemed illegitimate.
Today, around one million people remain displaced by the conflict, federal subsidy cuts have financially drained the region, and Tigray did not participate in the nationwide elections held on June 1.
