{"id":46257,"date":"2026-09-23T13:25:29","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T11:25:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/?post_type=news&#038;p=46257"},"modified":"2026-09-23T13:25:29","modified_gmt":"2026-09-23T11:25:29","slug":"tigrayan-forces-seize-airport-ethiopian-airlines-suspends-flights","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/tigrayan-forces-seize-airport-ethiopian-airlines-suspends-flights\/","title":{"rendered":"Tigrayan forces seize airport, Ethiopian Airlines suspends flights"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>Tigrayan forces \u200bseized the main airport in Ethiopia&#8217;s northern Tigray region on Wednesday, three local sources said, and Ethiopian \u200cAirlines suspended flights to the region, in the latest escalation to raise fears of a new war.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>The move follows months of deteriorating relations between the federal government and the Tigray People&#8217;s Liberation Front (TPLF), the party that runs Tigray. The two sides fought a war from 2020-2022 that resulted in \u200bhundreds of thousands of deaths.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>On Sunday, the TPLF and six other armed groups across Ethiopia announced that they \u200bhad formed an alliance aimed at overthrowing Abiy&#8217;s government.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>On Wednesday, three local sources, including one security source, \u2060told<i>\u00a0Reuters<\/i>\u00a0that Tigrayan forces had taken control of the Mekelle airport from federal police overnight.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>The state-owned carrier said on social \u200bmedia that flights to regional capital Mekelle and the cities of Shire and Axum had been halted &#8220;due to the current situation \u200bin Tigray region,&#8221; without giving further details.\u00a0<i>Reuters<\/i>\u00a0could not immediately confirm the situation in Shire and Axum.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Spokesperson for Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, the federal government and the TPLF did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8211;Reuters&#8211;<\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":46264,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[78,26],"class_list":["post-46257","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-featured","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"","published_date":"","news_description":"Tigrayan forces \u200bseized the main airport in Ethiopia","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/46257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/46257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46265,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/46257\/revisions\/46265"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=46257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}