🇪🇹⚡- BREAKING: The Tigray Defense Forces (the separatist branch of the TPLF) have seized Mekele International Airport in the Tigray region, northern Ethiopia.

🇪🇹⚡- Ethiopia has closed the airspace over the Tigray region, halting all fights to and from the TPLF controlled territory.

🇪🇹⚡- Heavy clashes have erupted in the Aba'ala region along the Tigray-Afar regional border, northern Ethiopia.

Rerum Novarum have previously documented the sparsely populated Afar border region as a known TDF hub with a significant TDF presence, and have tracked the emergence of local pro-Addis Ababa and anti-TDF Afar militias.

🇪🇹⚡- Fighting has expanded to the Sekota area along the Tigray-Amhara regional border, northern Ethiopia.

🇪🇹⚡- BREAKING: The Uguugumo have gone on the offensive in the Afar region, northern Ethiopia, against Addis Ababa-backed forces. Clashes are reported across several points in the region.

The offensive coincides with the TPLF's TDF clashes in the neighboring Tigray region.

Note, the Uguugumo (the Afar Revolutionary Democratic Unity Front) are an ethnic Afar separatist militant group in northern Ethiopia and south-eastern Eritrea.

🇪🇹 - Current situation in northern Ethiopia.

Purple indicates very likely control of territory by the Uguugumo, which includes the northern Afar town of Dalol, Konabe, the Erbeti area, Ab Ala, and the heights of Mengale.

The orange strips indicate the areas where clashes between the Tigray Defense Forces and Addis Ababa backed forces have been reported since this morning.

See Rerum Novarum's maps now at MiniMap.

🇪🇹 - Clashes across Tigray and Afar in northern Ethiopia are escalating significantly, with fighting reaching an intensity not seen since the Pretoria Ceasefire Agreement.

🇪🇹⚡- The TPLF administration, the TDF, says they have entered a "defensive war" with Addis Ababa.

🇪🇹 - Visual confirmation: Ab Ala, Tigray-Afar border, falls to the Uguugumo.

🇪🇹 - Uguugumo-affiliated media have announced the start of the “March to Sardo” in eastern Afar, northern Ethiopia.

Sardo is a vital energy hub for Addis Ababa, but more critically, it lies on the A1 Highway linking Afar’s capital, Semera, with Eritrea’s Assab on the Red Sea coast. The A1 is the only highway through the area, as the surrounding terrain is largely mountainous.

Losing control of Sardo and the bridge over the Mille River would effectively cut this corridor, restricting the Ethiopian Armed Forces ability to launch any future offensive towards Assab.

🇷🇺🇵🇱⚡️- A Russian MI-8 helicopter from the Kaliningrad enclave entered Polish airspace today in Braniewo at 11:08AM for 48 seconds and went 300m inside Poland before returning to Kaliningrad.

🇮🇷🇴🇲⚡- Iran has disabled a cargo vessel in the Strait of Hormuz. The vessel is on "fire and adrift," with the crew evacuated, UKMTO reports.

🇾🇪🇸🇦⚡- Alerts in southwest Saudi Arabia.

🇾🇪🇸🇦⚡- Explosions heard in Jizan, southwest Saudi Arabia. Could be a mix of interceptions and impacts.