Internet and telephone networks were disrupted across Tigray on September 25, adding communications isolation to the most serious fighting northern Ethiopia has seen since the 2022 Pretoria peace agreement. NetBlocks detected a subnational internet disruption, Reuters reporters found Ethio telecom connections unavailable and Safaricom service limited, and AFP said it was unable to reach sources in the region by phone.
The cause is contested. Four people with knowledge of the matter told Reuters that the Tigray People's Liberation Front had ordered Ethio telecom and Safaricom to cut access. One source said restricting mobile communications could reduce the federal army's ability to use civilian networks to support battlefield drones. A source close to the TPLF denied responsibility and blamed the federal government. Neither side has supplied public evidence sufficient to settle the question.
The outage matters because communications were a weapon and a humanitarian constraint in the 2020-22 war. Tigray spent long periods largely cut off from phone and internet service while access to cash, food and medicine also deteriorated. A blackout today therefore carries a meaning larger than inconvenience: residents remember how isolation reduced independent reporting, disrupted banking and complicated humanitarian operations.
A new layer on an already expanding war
PUNT NEWS reported on September 24 that fighting had reached the approaches to Lalibela and that senior Tigrayan military figures had been detained. A day earlier, this publication documented the spread of combat into Afar and Amhara. The communications disruption is a new stage because it affects the civilian infrastructure through which information, money and family contact move.
AFP reported heavy overnight fighting in Afar, where federal forces were trying to repel a Tigrayan assault. Reuters had already reported panic-buying in Tigray as residents emptied shop shelves and withdrew cash. Those behaviours reflect expectations rather than proof of an impending siege. They are nevertheless rational responses in a region where the previous war turned transport and communications breakdown into shortages.
The federal army and Tigrayan authorities continue to provide incompatible accounts of responsibility and battlefield losses. Addis Ababa says the TPLF launched the offensive; Tigray's leadership says it is fighting defensively against federal aggression. Federal military casualty figures remain claims by a belligerent. The communications outage makes independent verification harder precisely when the number of claims is increasing.
Information infrastructure has military value
Modern warfare turns ordinary communications networks into contested infrastructure. Mobile towers and fibre networks serve households and businesses, but they can also carry military communications, geolocation data and links used by unmanned systems. Cutting a network may deny an adversary some capabilities while simultaneously imposing large costs on civilians.
That dual use helps explain why responsibility for the present outage is politically important. If the TPLF ordered the shutdown, it would suggest a tactical decision made inside Tigray despite the civilian consequences. If federal authorities caused it, the event would revive one of the most controversial practices of the previous war. The available evidence does not yet allow PUNT NEWS to choose between those explanations.
NetBlocks supplies a narrower but more reliable finding: connectivity fell sharply in northern Ethiopia in a pattern consistent with reports of a Tigray blackout. That establishes the effect without establishing the actor.
The Pretoria settlement is losing practical content
The 2022 peace agreement did more than stop gunfire. It was supposed to restore services, reopen access and create conditions for political normalization. Each new disruption therefore measures the erosion of the settlement in practical terms. Airports have changed hands, civilian flights have been suspended, fighting has crossed regional boundaries and now communications are failing.
The September 23 airport seizures were the first highly visible break in normal civilian connectivity. The telecom disruption extends that break into everyday life. Even if service returns quickly, the episode demonstrates how easily civilian systems can again become part of the conflict.
The next questions are operational: whether networks are restored, whether fighting in Afar and Amhara continues to widen, whether Lalibela remains connected to normal transport, and whether either side accepts renewed mediation. Until then, northern Ethiopia is moving toward a familiar and dangerous condition in which the battlefield expands faster than outsiders can verify what is happening on it.