‘Weight of responsibility’: Promise and perils of covering Ethiopia’s war

Fighting resumed in northern Ethiopia on September 23, shattering the peace deal signed nearly four years earlier by the government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). Mohammed Taha Tawakel recounts travelling from Addis Ababa to Erbeti in the Afar region and then toward Mekelle to report on clashes between the federal government-backed Tigray Peace Force and the TPLF. Residents were fleeing Erbeti with their belongings as shelling shook the town, forcing the reporting team to leave only hours after arriving. Tawakel also recalls his reporting in 2021, during a previous war that killed more than half a million people and displaced about two million before the 2022 peace deal.