Ethiopia faces a myriad of security challenges, including in its most populous regions, Oromia and Amhara.
The Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), rebels in northern Ethiopia, have seized control of the airport in the regional capital, security and local sources told AFP on Wednesday.
TPLF, which controls the region, fought a devastating civil war with the federal government in 2020-2022 that killed some 600,000 people, according to African Union estimates.
"While we were on our way to the airport for work, our supervisor called the driver and told him that the airport had been taken over by Tigray forces. Since there were no flights, he told us to return home," an employee at Alula Aba Nega Airport in the Tigray province capital Mekelle told AFP.
The information was confirmed by a foreign security source based in Ethiopia.
‘Cancelled flights’
A small number of federal police guard the airport, and their condition was unknown.
Flight Radar, an air traffic tracker, showed that Wednesday morning's flight between Mekelle and the federal capital, Addis Ababa, had been cancelled.
"Ethiopian Airlines has temporarily suspended flights to Mekele, Axum, and Shire effective today, due to the current situation in the Tigray region," the national carrier said in a statement.
Ethiopia faces a myriad of security challenges, including in its most populous regions, Oromia and Amhara.
The TPLF ruled the whole of Ethiopia from 1991 to 2018 before the rise of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.
The Pretoria Peace Agreement ended the war and maintained an uneasy calm until late 2025, when clashes resumed.
Clashes between the federal government and the TPLF rebels have continued ever since.
The region has not recovered from the last war, with around one million people still displaced and many aspects of the peace agreement still unfulfilled.
