Seven Ethiopian armed groups, including longstanding enemies who fought on opposite sides of a 2020-2022 civil war, said they have formed an alliance aimed at overthrowing Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government.
The new alliance, announced late on Sunday (September 20, 2026), includes the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and the Amhara Fano National Movement. Fano, a coalition of armed groups from the Amhara region, fought in support of the federal government against the TPLF during the 2020-2022 Tigray war, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and was marked by ethnically driven atrocities.
The government says it has launched a national dialogue meant to address longstanding political divisions and internal conflicts. Spokespeople for Mr. Ahmed and the federal government did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Last month, after reports of a possible coalition of armed groups, an adviser to Mr. Many of the groups have accused the government of centralising power and marginalising the regions.
Fano subsequently rose up against the federal government in a conflict that has killed thousands in Amhara since 2023. In May, the TPLF reasserted control over the region’s political administration in violation of the 2022 peace deal that ended the Tigray war after accusing the federal government of failing to uphold the agreement. The federal government has not commented on the reported strikes, but the military said last week that nearly 300 Tigrayan fighters had surrendered to it.
Ahmed said any such formation would seek to wreak havoc but would not be able to overthrow the federal government. “We, the peoples’ forces concerned with the survival of Ethiopia’s peoples, bear the historic responsibility of overthrowing this regime,” said the statement read out by Fano leader Zemene Kassie and broadcast on Tigrayan television.
