Ethiopian federal forces and pro-government militias took Mekelle on 4 October. A source close to the Tigray Peace Forces told Reuters its fighters entered the city centre on Saturday afternoon, with the Ethiopian military behind them. A humanitarian source and a resident confirmed government control the next day.
Then the TPLF said it had "temporarily moved out of Mekelle" to "operate from somewhere else".
Almost nothing on this site has that shape. Nearly every claim we handle rests on one side's account, or on anonymous sources all leaning the same way. This one the losing party conceded in public, and losing a regional capital is the most expensive admission it could make.
The threshold
On 1 October, three days before the city fell, the Critical Threats Project published an assessment with an unusually specific line in it:
"Eritrea could launch a major intervention against the ENDF should certain thresholds be crossed, such as the ENDF capture of Mekele or a broader ENDF advance toward the Eritrea-Ethiopia border."
That was a dated, falsifiable prediction about a trigger. The trigger has now fired.
We are not endorsing the forecast. CTP is an American think tank with its own frame, and analysts who name thresholds are often wrong about them. But it was written down before the event, which is the only kind of prediction worth anything, and it points at the thing to watch this week.
What Addis is already saying
On the same day Mekelle fell, Abraham Belay — a former defence minister, now Commissioner of the Ethiopian Nuclear Energy Commission — told the state-affiliated broadcaster Fana that "Eritrean forces entered Ethiopian territory, participated on various fronts and provided support and weapons to the group".
He added: "Those who enter another country, oppose its government and join forces working to destabilize it should expect serious consequences."
Two things about that are worth separating. The threat was made — that is a fact, on the record. Whether Eritrean troops have actually been fighting inside Ethiopia is a different question, and nobody has published a photograph, a prisoner, a piece of captured equipment or an intercept.
It is also worth noting what he is not. He is not the defence minister and not the foreign minister; his portfolio is nuclear energy. He is a senior figure and an ethnic Tigrayan, which gives the accusation weight inside Ethiopia, but this is not a formal statement of government position.
Why the accusation is hard to assess
In the 2020–2022 war, Eritrean troops fought in Tigray alongside Ethiopian federal forces, against the TPLF. The claim now is that Eritrea is arming and fighting beside the TPLF, against those same federal forces.
A reversal of that size in four years is not impossible. Al Jazeera sets out the stated reasons: Eritrea's exclusion from the 2022 Pretoria settlement, and Abiy Ahmed's open pursuit of sea access through the Eritrean port of Assab. Asmara has long read that ambition as a threat to its coastline.
But a claim that large needs evidence to match, and there isn't any in public. Ethiopia has also accused Sudan and Egypt. Eritrea denies everything. Each government has an obvious use for the accusation and none has shown its working.