Does NBC News's photo show “Tigrayan opposition fighters” in Mekelle?

What was claimed

On 8 October, NBC News published an Associated Press story under the headline “Eritrean troops cross into northern Ethiopia as conflict escalates” A. We examined that headline in our fact check of the AP and NBC headlines. This fact check is about the photo under it.

The photo shows two armed men in camouflage on a pavement, one in a red headscarf. NBC’s caption reads: “Tigrayan opposition fighters in Mekelle, in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, on Sunday.” It is credited to Filmon Equar Hailu of AP A.

What AP says the photo shows

AP’s archive holds the photo under ID 26277706263319, taken in Mekelle on Sunday 4 October. AP’s caption reads: “Tigray Peace Force fighters stand in a road after entering Mekelle, in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, Sunday, Oct. 4, 2026” B. The same words are written into the image file itself. The photos match in every detail C.

The Tigray Peace Force is not the opposition. It is a militia allied with Ethiopia’s federal government, fighting alongside the army against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front E. On 4 October, the day the photo was taken, AP reported that “opposition fighters” had withdrawn from Mekelle and the government had retaken it D. The armed men AP photographed in the city that day were the militia that entered it with the government, not the forces that had just left.

Why it matters here

The story beneath the photo rests on a Tigray Peace Force commander. Its first named source is “Ermiyas Ababu, a Tigray Peace Force commander based in Mekelle”, who said Eritrean personnel had entered Adigrat and Idaga Hamus A. AP said it could not verify his account E.

So the photo shows the source’s own militia, a government ally, while the caption tells readers they are the government’s opponents. In a story about whether Eritrean troops crossed the border to support the opposition, a reader is shown pro-government fighters labelled as the side Eritrea is accused of helping.

Our verdict

False. NBC News’s caption calls the men in the photo “Tigrayan opposition fighters”. AP’s caption for the same photo identifies them as Tigray Peace Force fighters, a militia allied with the Ethiopian government, entering Mekelle after the opposition withdrew. The caption puts them on the wrong side of the conflict, in a story whose main source is a commander of that same militia.