Fears of ‘slow, certain death’ stalk Tigray amid rumblings of renewed war

As tensions escalate between Ethiopia and Eritrea, would new conflict position Addis Ababa against Tigray’s leadership?

Tigray, Ethiopia – Saba Gedion was 17 when the peace deal that ended the conflict in her homeland of Tigray in northern Ethiopia was signed in 2022.

She hoped then that fighting would be a thing of the past, but the last few months have convinced her that strife is once again looming, and she feels paralysed with despair.

“Many people are leaving the region in droves,” Gedion told Al Jazeera as she sat under the shade of a tree, selling coffee to the occasional customer in an area frequented by internally displaced people (IDPs) in Tigray’s capital, Mekelle.

Gedion – herself a displaced person – is from the town of Humera, a now-disputed area with the Amhara region that witnessed heavy clashes during the 2020-2022 war between Ethiopia’s federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).

The now-21-year-old remembers the horrors she witnessed. Some of her family were killed, while others were abducted into neighbouring Eritrea, she says. She has not heard from them since.