Ethiopian federal troops rolled into Mekelle, the capital of the northern Tigray region, on Saturday without resistance, retaking the city just over a week after the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) launched a surprise offensive that reignited fears of a return to full-scale civil war in the Horn of Africa.

Federal forces were patrolling Mekelle’s streets and manning key government buildings by Sunday, and communications into the city were restored for the first time in more than a week, after the TPLF withdrew its fighters rather than hold the city. The TPLF had launched attacks against federal positions on September 23, the first major breach of a 2022 peace deal that ended Ethiopia’s brutal 2020-2022 civil war, a conflict the African Union estimates killed more than 600,000 people, mostly in Tigray.

Though federal forces now hold the regional capital, analysts and the group’s own leadership suggest the fighting is far from over. TPLF leader Debretsion Gebremichael signaled the group has shifted to irregular warfare, saying, “We operate under a strategy to strike the enemy wherever we choose,” language that echoes the guerrilla tactics the TPLF used for years before it seized power in Addis Ababa in 1991, a hold on federal government it kept until 2018.

The renewed fighting has rapidly escalated into a wider regional confrontation. Ethiopia’s government accuses Egypt, Eritrea and Sudan of arming and backing the TPLF offensive, a charge all three countries deny. The dispute has already triggered a diplomatic rupture: Egypt and Ethiopia have expelled each other’s senior diplomats, Ethiopia shut its embassy in Eritrea and declared ten Eritrean diplomats persona non grata, and Eritrea cut diplomatic ties with Addis Ababa after overnight blasts struck the Ethiopian capital.

Against that backdrop, the leaders of Egypt, Eritrea, Somalia and Sudan gathered Sunday in the Egyptian coastal city of New Alamein for a four-way summit, joining Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi, Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki, Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and Sudan’s army chief and de facto leader, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. Egypt’s presidency said the meeting was intended to “coordinate and consult on regional issues of interest” to the four nations, and officials signaled the group would announce expanded military cooperation, including steps described as “broadening the extent of military cooperation to safeguard the region and protect Red Sea shipping.”

Each of the three governments has its own long-running grievance with Addis Ababa: Egypt remains locked in a decade-long dispute with Ethiopia over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and Nile water rights; Eritrea’s tensions with Ethiopia date back more than three decades to its secession; and Sudan accuses Ethiopia of supporting the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces it has been fighting since 2023. Egypt also has a direct military footprint in the region, with roughly 15,000 troops deployed in Somalia as part of African Union peacekeeping operations and military sites of its own in Eritrea.

With Mekelle back under federal control but the TPLF signaling a drawn-out insurgency and four neighboring governments drawing closer together against Addis Ababa, regional observers warn the Horn of Africa risks sliding toward a wider conflict involving multiple states rather than a contained return to Ethiopia’s civil war.

Sources: Channels Television, The National, Ahram Online