WarFronts Weekly 9.25.2026: Friday Blitz.

25.09.2026

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Ethiopia Tensions Explode, Experts Warn of Full-Scale War:

After months of building tensions and international warnings—including from the WarFronts team—Ethiopia has descended into a new internal armed conflict. On Sunday, seven major Ethiopian armed groups, including the Tigray TPLF, Amhara Fano, and Oromo Liberation Army, formally announced an alliance to overthrow Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, and establish a transitional government in his place.

Two days later, on Tuesday night, the Tigray TPLF kicked off the hostilities, seizing airports in Axum, Shire, and the Tigray regional capital city of Mekele. Ethiopian federal forces did not offer major resistance; instead, Ethiopia’s national carrier suspended flights, as the takeover provided Addis Ababa with sufficient justification to cut off access to the Tigray region by air. In the periphery of the airport attacks, Tigrayan forces claimed to have taken over several towns and villages.

By Thursday, the fighting had escalated much further, with the Ethiopian military claiming that it had killed dozens of TPLF fighters, and seized large weapons stockpiles after counteroffensive operations. By the day’s end, Ethiopia claimed to have killed 272 rebels along with around 260 wounded, while the Amhara Fano resistance captured over two hundred Ethiopian soldiers, including a division commander, after a large battle.

In this early stage of the conflict, TPLF forces appear to be focused on capturing northern road junctions, to consolidate control over majority-Tigray and other rebel-held areas. Their offensive is likely intended to isolate federal forces in northern Ethiopia, and may also seek to cut off a trade corridor with Djibouti, where Ethiopia sends roughly ninety-five percent of its imports and exports for maritime trade.

On Friday, the Internet-access monitor NetBlocks warned that connectivity to northern Ethiopia had been partially cut off, with Agence France-Presse confirming that it could not reach local sources by phone. Ethiopian forces leveraged high-intensity airstrikes against rebel positions along multiple fronts, as Ethiopian President Taye Atske Selassie used his time at the United Nations General Assembly to blame “external actors”—implied to be Egypt and Eritrea—for acting as “forces of destruction and mayhem”.

Ethiopia’s rebel coalition, however, appears committed to the fight. On Thursday, Tigray leaders told Agence France-Presse that they now consider themselves to be in a state of “full-blown war” with Addis Ababa. Some of the TPLF’s rebel allies have yet to enter the conflict in force, but between active participation by the Amhara Fano, and the likely backing of Eritrea, the TPLF seem to have no interest in de-escalation.

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Around the World:

Yemeni government forces claimed to have repelled a series of Houthi attacks against a critical supply route, which runs between the besieged city of Ta’iz and the internationally recognized de facto capital city of Aden. The route has been under intense pressure from the Houthis since their lightning takeover of Yemen’s Red Sea coastline, and even limited Yemeni territorial losses in that area could allow the Houthis to fully encircle Ta’iz. According to Houthi sources, Saudi Arabia conducted over fifty airstrikes and missile attacks across several Yemeni governorates on Wednesday. Then on Thursday, the Houthis claimed retaliatory strikes against Riyadh and against Saudi Aramco facilities in the port city of Yanbu; Saudi Arabia acknowledged six missile interceptions. Saudi Arabia’s highest religious authority, Grand Mufti Sheikh Saleh bin Fawzan al-Fawzan, called upon Saudi soldiers to prepare to lay down their lives in their fight against the Houthis, potentially laying a religious and ideological foundation for broader Saudi engagement, as French President Emmanuel Macron acknowledged a coming deployment to support Riyadh.

Russia launched a large ballistic missile barrage against Ukraine in the early hours of Thursday morning, killing at least eight people and striking a range of targets including a maternity hospital. The strikes damaged nine homes across the capital city of Kyiv, and also targeted a vegetable storage facility at a farm, where six were killed. Ukraine counted 282 drones and an unspecified number of ballistic and cruise missiles. The strikes came after a full day of intermittent drone attacks across Kyiv on Wednesday, and were likely intended as retaliation after a record-breaking wave of Ukrainian drones crossed into Russia last Sunday. According to Russian authorities, Ukraine fired over 1,000 drones in that attack, including several hundred that targeted Moscow on the third and final day of State Duma elections.

The Islamic State – Sahel carried out multiple attacks across the nation of Niger on Wednesday, weeks after an attempted coup by mutineering front-line troops left Niger internally weakened. In one attack, Islamic State fighters attacked an army position and killed thirty-eight soldiers; elsewhere, an ambush on a military convoy left another twenty soldiers dead, while a pro-Niamey militia leader was killed in a targeted assassination at his home.

Pakistan struck Afghanistan with a wave of airstrikes on Thursday, targeting ten locations that Islamabad claimed were used to launch and store drones. The strikes came after a back-and-forth exchange in which Pakistan raided the hideouts of militant groups that it accuses Afghanistan of supporting, and Afghanistan allegedly responded by launching several drones against Pakistan. According to Kabul, four civilians were killed in the latest round of Pakistani airstrikes. On Friday, Pakistan claimed to have thwarted a new attack by the Afghan Taliban in the Gulistan border area, with several Afghan fighters killed at the scene. Elsewhere in Pakistan, two police officers were shot and killed while guarding polio workers in the southwestern province of Balochistan, where separatist attacks are common.

The Colombian tourist city of Santa Marta has been paralyzed for days by the threat of violence from a nearby armed group, the Conquering Self-Defense Forces of the Sierra Nevada (ACSN), after one of the group’s leaders and twelve other members were killed by Colombian forces. Santa Marta is under the protection of some 1,100 soldiers and federal police, but businesses heeded the ACSN’s order to close this week, as militants fired at storefronts and lit buses and trucks on fire. Colombia’s recently inaugurated president, security hardliner Abelardo de la Espriella, patrolled city streets on Tuesday while wearing a pistol and bulletproof vest.

Tensions flared again in the West Bank this week, after a Palestinian gunman shot and killed an Israeli man on Sunday, and hours later, Israeli troops gunned down a Palestinian driver who Israel claimed had attempted a ramming attack against their position. The incidents took place on the eve of the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur; Israel’s government responded with an order to increase security and carry out local arrests. On Wednesday, Israeli authorities reported another ramming attack—this one, critically injuring the son of Israel’s ambassador to the United States, who is a deployed reservist with the Israel Defense Forces.

A Russian helicopter entered Polish airspace for a total of forty-two seconds on Wednesday, penetrating approximately 300 meters into Polish territory after entering from the neighboring Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. Poland’s Army Operational Command acknowledged the incident, and indicated that fighter jets were scrambled, but the helicopter was not shot down. The incident was almost certainly a Russian test of both NATO response times, and Poland’s resolve to defend its airspace via kinetic means, after a notorious 2015 incident in Turkey resulted in the prompt shoot-down of a Russian fighter jet.

Libya’s important Akakus pipeline was unexpectedly shut on Monday after an unidentified armed group closed a valve on the pipeline, for reasons that have not yet been made public. The pipeline transports oil from the Al-Sharara field to an export terminal in the coastal city of Zawiya; Al-Sharara is responsible for roughly one-third of Libya’s total oil output. After the pipeline closure, Libya’s National Oil Corporation warned that it may have to declare force majeure and suspend its delivery obligations, at a sensitive moment for global oil markets.

Iraqi leadership backed away from an end-of-September deadline for pro-Iran armed groups to complete a disarmament process, after resistance from several key groups that made total compliance unlikely. The deadline has now been extended to June 30, 2027, with implementation to begin in January; the Baghdad administration hopes that in the interim period, tensions across the wider Middle East may subside, thus removing the justification for armed groups to use their weapons in support of Iran.

Venezuelan interim President Delcy Rodriguez promised that her nation will hold elections, and follow “an orderly, institutional, and verifiable process” to improve conditions there. The pledge, made during an address to the United Nations General Assembly, may provide limited reassurance to Venezuelans after Rodriguez’ government has met with select members of the political opposition. Venezuela has yet to set a date for any elections, however, and has yet to select a Supreme Court or National Electoral Council, which opposition figures have demanded as a prerequisite for a vote.

Brazil’s electoral court ruled that authorities can dispute the candidacyof political candidates with known or suspected criminal ties, in a landmark step to crack down on organized criminal influence in the nation’s politics. While the move addresses a longstanding challenge to Brazilian governance, the timing of the decision—ahead of highly controversial nationwide elections where both leading candidates have been marred by scandal—has raised concerns over potential violations of due process.

The Philippine Senate agreed to lower the threshold of votes required to convict Vice President Sara Duterte in her impeachment proceedings, after four of her trial’s twenty-four senator-judges were unable to participate in the proceedings. The impeachment requires two-thirds support to result in a conviction, and without a rule change, the original threshold would have required sixteen of the remaining twenty senator-judges to vote to convict.

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