Embassy closed, ties severed: Ethiopia and Eritrea edge the Horn of Africa toward wider war

Ethiopia and Eritrea severed their diplomatic ties on Thursday and Friday, in the sharpest rupture between the two neighbours since they fought a border war from 1998 to 2000 — and in the shadow of a renewed war in Tigray that is already the worst escalation since the 2020–22 civil war in which hundreds of thousands of people were killed.

Ethiopia said on Thursday it was closing its embassy in Asmara 'in response to Eritrea's direct and indirect acts of hostility and belligerence', and ordered 10 Eritrean diplomats to leave the country within 48 hours. Eritrea responded by severing all diplomatic ties, warning of 'negative corollaries'. The rupture came hours after powerful explosions were heard overnight in Addis Ababa, including near Ethiopia's military headquarters, Reuters reported.

Addis Ababa accuses Eritrea, Sudan and Egypt of backing a rebel alliance led by the Tigray People's Liberation Front, which has been battling federal forces since last week. All three deny the charge. On the ground, Ethiopian forces and allied militiamen were reported to be within striking distance of Mekelle, the Tigrayan capital, where banks and shops closed on Friday. Suspected drone attacks on Addis Ababa earlier this week suggested the TPLF and its allies can strike far beyond the northern front.

The civilian toll is already mounting. A doctor in Alamata told the BBC at least 52 civilians were killed in three days of intense fighting; tens of thousands have fled homes in Afar along the corridor to Djibouti. The UN has warned that drone strikes, road closures and insecurity are disrupting aid deliveries in the north. Ethiopia also expelled an Egyptian diplomat, ordering him out within 48 hours — Cairo responded in kind — as tensions over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile bleed into the wider crisis.

The diplomatic break reverses the 2018 rapprochement between the two countries, the handshake that reopened the border and helped earn Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed the Nobel Peace Prize. During the 2020–22 war, Eritrea fought alongside Ethiopia's federal government; now the two stand on opposite sides of a conflict neither can fully control. The African Union has urged all three countries to exercise maximum restraint, but the closure of embassies is the public acknowledgement of a rupture that had already occurred — and ruptures without talking channels are how miscalculations turn into regional wars.

Analysts now fear the conflict will spill beyond Ethiopia's borders: Eritrea to the north, Sudan — itself in a more than three-year civil war — to the west, and the Red Sea corridor through Djibouti to the east. The Horn of Africa, eight years after a Nobel was awarded for its peace, is once again counting down to a war it cannot afford.