Dozens of civilians, including children, have been killed and wounded as Ethiopian government forces bombard towns in Tigray and push north towards the rebel-held capital, health workers and locals told AFP on Tuesday.

Heavy fighting broke out last week between federal forces and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), raising fears of a return to the full-blown civil war of 2020-2022 that caused the deaths of an estimated 600,000 people.

Fighting is ongoing along several fronts, but government forces appear to be pushing north into Tigray, towards the regional capital of Mekelle.

Pro-government forces said they took control of the strategic town of Alamata in southern Tigray on Monday, while locals interviewed by AFP at a hospital said there had been heavy shelling on the town of Maychew further north.

A senior health worker in the Aydar Referral Hospital, Mekelle’s biggest medical facility, said they had received 44 critically injured civilians, including 33 children, wounded by shelling on Maychew and Alamata between Saturday and Monday.

“Some are blinded, some have their legs and hands amputated from the bombing,” the health worker said, adding that at least four people had died en route to the hospital from the towns.

The casualty numbers could not be independently verified by AFP and reporting is highly constrained by the conflict and extensive telecoms disruptions.

A resident of Maychew who accompanied his wounded sister to the hospital told AFP that the town was bombed six times and the shelling struck a residential area, killing two people he knew.

In a separate incident in Alamata, a market area was heavily shelled on Saturday, killing several civilians, said another person at the hospital, accompanying his wounded five-year-old sister.

The previous civil war between the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and the TPLF, which dominates politics in Tigray, ended with the Pretoria Peace Agreement of 2022.

But it was never fully implemented, and since late 2025, the government launched multiple drone strikes in Tigray and massed troops at the border, while the TPLF kicked out a government-appointed administration.

On 23 September, the TPLF seized Tigrayan airports from federal police and launched attacks into neighbouring Amhara and Afar states, operating alongside local militias.

A humanitarian source in Afar confirmed that rebel forces had taken control of the town of Erebti, which had then been shelled by government forces, leading to an unconfirmed number of civilian casualties.