Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has publicly admitted that Eritrea's forces committed massacres and widespread atrocities during the Tigray conflict, marking a stunning reversal for a leader who spent years denying Eritrean involvement in the two-year war that killed an estimated 600,000 people.
Speaking before Ethiopia's parliament, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate confirmed that the breakdown in relations with Eritrea stems directly from Asmara's refusal to acknowledge or take responsibility for mass killings, including the November 2020 Aksum massacre where witnesses say Eritrean soldiers killed hundreds of civilians in the sacred city's streets and churches.
"The issue between us and Eritrea is about the war crimes they committed," Abiy told lawmakers, according to BBC reporting. "They entered our country, they committed atrocities, and when we asked them to take responsibility, they refused."
The admission carries profound implications for accountability in a conflict where Abiy initially denied Eritrean forces had even entered Ethiopia. Tigist Assefa, a Tigrayan civil society leader based in Mekelle, represents the thousands of survivors who waited years to hear their government acknowledge what happened.
"We documented the massacres in real time. We told the world. But our own prime minister called us liars," said Tigrayan activists following the speech. "Now he admits it—not to seek justice for us, but to explain why he's fallen out with his former ally. Where does that leave the victims?"
The Aksum massacre, which occurred during the Ethiopian and Eritrean military offensive to capture Tigray from the Tigray People's Liberation Front in November 2020, has been documented by Amnesty International, the UN Human Rights Office, and dozens of survivor testimonies. Witnesses described Eritrean soldiers going house to house, killing men and boys, and desecrating the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion, one of Ethiopian Orthodoxy's holiest sites.
For three years, Abiy's government maintained that reports of Eritrean atrocities were exaggerated or fabricated by TPLF propaganda. Eritrea's President Isaias Afwerki has never publicly acknowledged his forces' presence in Tigray, despite overwhelming evidence including battlefield casualties, defector testimonies, and satellite imagery.
Dr. Yohannes Woldemariam, a Horn of Africa analyst at Fort Hare University in South Africa, argues the admission reveals Abiy's political calculations more than a commitment to justice. "He's not apologizing to Tigrayans. He's explaining to Ethiopians why the alliance with Eritrea collapsed," he noted. "The question is whether this opens space for accountability, or whether it's just the latest narrative shift from a leader who has proven remarkably flexible with the truth."
The timing matters. Relations between Addis Ababa and Asmara have deteriorated since the November 2022 ceasefire that ended active fighting in Tigray. Eritrea has refused to withdraw from occupied territories in western and northern Tigray, and tensions over port access and the Afar border have escalated.
But Abiy's admission also raises fundamental questions about sovereignty and command responsibility. If Eritrean forces committed massacres on Ethiopian soil, why didn't the Ethiopian government stop them? If Abiy invited them in—as many analysts believe—is he not responsible for their actions?
Laetitia Bader, Horn of Africa director at Human Rights Watch, told the organization's Nairobi office that the statement should trigger formal accountability mechanisms. "A head of state has acknowledged that foreign forces committed mass atrocities on his territory during a war his government was prosecuting. The African Union, the UN, and Ethiopia's own institutions need to respond with investigations, not silence."
For Tigrayans, the admission brings both validation and frustration. Former TPLF officials now in exile posted on social media: "We never needed Abiy Ahmed to confirm what we lived through. We needed justice. That remains as distant as ever."
The 2022 Pretoria Agreement that ended the war included provisions for transitional justice and accountability, but implementation has stalled. Eritrea was not party to the agreement, complicating any cross-border accountability efforts.
Meanwhile, ordinary Ethiopians are left to parse another revision of their recent history. For a prime minister who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for making peace with Eritrea, then waged war with them as allies, then turned against them while admitting they committed atrocities he once denied—the question is what story comes next, and whether it will finally center the voices of those who survived.
54 countries, 2,000 languages, 1.4 billion people. In Ethiopia alone, over 110 million are owed an honest accounting of the deadliest conflict of the 21st century. This admission is a start. Justice remains a distant promise.
