A Think Tank Warned Ethiopia and Eritrea Are 'Perilously Close' to All-Out War. Its Own Analysis Says That War Would Pull In Sudan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

The International Crisis Group's 12 October alert, "Pulling Ethiopia and Eritrea Back from War," says the two governments are perilously close to direct interstate conflict for the first time since their 1998-2000 border war, and that any outbreak would likely spread into the Red Sea and draw in Sudan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, according to Crisis Group's published analysis, the Globe and Mail and Al Jazeera. Ethiopian federal forces and the allied Tigray Peace Force have, per the conflict monitor ACLED, now taken every major city in Tigray, including the historic city of Aksum, and advanced within roughly 80 kilometres of Eritrea's Red Sea port of Assab, while Globe and Mail reporting citing Ethiopia scholar Kjetil Tronvoll puts several hundred thousand Ethiopian and Eritrean troops now massed along their shared border. Both governments expelled each other's diplomats and severed relations on 1-2 October; U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on 14 October urging restraint and warning against cross-border incursions, and Canada separately said it was "deeply concerned" about regional escalation, according to the Globe and Mail. The Tigray Peace Force says Eritrean forces have taken "heavy losses" in fighting near the border; Eritrea's information minister, Yemane Gebremeskel, calls the claim false, and ACLED says Eritrean troops that crossed into Ethiopia near Zalambessa have since pulled back toward their own territory, with neither claim independently verified.

19 October 2026 · 9 min read