Israelis rescued from north Ethiopia after days of being stuck amid rebel advance

Some 20 Israeli citizens who were stuck in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region amid a rebel advance in the area have been rescued after three days of “intensive efforts,” the Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday.

The ministry said it worked in coordination with the Israeli embassy in Addis Ababa and other relevant authorities to extract the stranded Israelis from the area.

“The group of Israelis who had become stranded in Lalibela in northern Ethiopia amid the security escalation in the area were evacuated yesterday and today by helicopter,” the ministry said in a statement.

“Helicopters transported the group to a safe area, from which they will continue on to Addis Ababa,” the ministry continued.

It said representatives would continue to accompany and assist the group until they arrive safely in Addis Ababa.

The Israelis became trapped in the Tigray region as a result of heavy clashes that erupted last week between the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and the federal government.

The fighting has raised fears of a return to the full-blown civil war of 2020-2022, in which an estimated 600,000 people died.

The Israelis were stuck in the city of Lalibela, where airports are reportedly closed and road travel is dangerous.

The stranded Israelis wrote to the Foreign Ministry to request help, the Ynet news site reported earlier this week.

The letter reportedly informed the ministry that “flights have been canceled indefinitely, and this is no longer just a delay of a few days” and that “the city’s fuel, food and cash stocks are extremely limited.”

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

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.

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 has launched multiple drone strikes in Tigray and massed troops at the border, while the TPLF kicked out a government-appointed administration.

On September 23, 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.