Did “Eritrean forces cross the border” into Tigray last week, as The New Humanitarian states?

What was claimed

On 12 October, The New Humanitarian, a Geneva-based newsroom widely read by aid agencies and diplomats, published an analysis headlined “Eritrean incursions raise fears of a wider regional war in Ethiopia” A. It opens:

The conflict in Ethiopia’s northern region of Tigray moved a step closer to triggering a wider conflagration last week when Eritrean forces crossed the border, and Ethiopia hit back with two days of drone strikes on the troops and equipment.

Both events are stated as fact, in the outlet’s own voice. The next paragraph says Eritrea “denied multiple reports of the incursion” A.

What the article relies on

The words “multiple reports” link to one source: a BBC article of 9 October B. That article relied on residents’ accounts, and we examined how it presented them in our fact check of the BBC headline.

The other reports available on 12 October were of the same kind. Reuters quoted two residents of Adigrat who said they saw trucks carrying Eritrean soldiers; Eritrea’s information minister denied Eritrean forces were there C. The conflict monitor ACLED reported drone strikes on Eritrean vehicles, which it said were “believed to have been carried out by Ethiopia’s military”, and Reuters said it “could not independently verify the information” D.

The second half of the sentence goes further than the sources it rests on. ACLED attributed the strikes to Ethiopia as a belief. AFP reported that “neither Ethiopia nor Eritrea has responded to questions about the fighting” E. We found no published Ethiopian statement claiming the strikes. The New Humanitarian presents them as Ethiopia hitting back.

The article then adds a claim of its own: “local sources told The New Humanitarian that Eritrean forces took part in clashes in multiple locations over the past few days, including at Adi Hageray” A. It does not say who the sources are, how they would know the forces were Eritrean, or whether the claim was checked. ACLED’s entry for 12 October records Ethiopian government forces and the Tigray Peace Force taking Adi Hageray and nearby villages, and Eritrean and Tigrayan forces leaving the town of Sheraro further along the same road. It names no source, and does not describe Eritrean forces fighting at Adi Hageray F.

Our verdict

Unsupported. The New Humanitarian states that Eritrean forces crossed the border and that Ethiopia struck them with drones. The record behind both is residents’ accounts and a conflict monitor’s report that the news agencies said they could not verify, and a belief, not a statement, about who flew the drones. Eritrea denies the incursion, and we found no published Ethiopian statement claiming the strikes. The article’s only link for the “multiple reports” is a single BBC article, and its new claim about Adi Hageray rests on unnamed sources. If evidence emerges, we will review this fact check.