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Ethiopia’s military has accused Egypt, Sudan and Eritrea of supporting a rebel offensive against the federal government.

Getting into it: Field Marshal Birhanu Jula, Ethiopia’s army chief, said on the army’s YouTube channel that the rebels are serving “the interests of external forces” and could not make gains unless they were “backed, supported and supplied by Sudan, Egypt and other external powers.” He also claimed Eritrea has been the go-between connecting outside backers with armed groups in the country, but he offered no evidence for any of it.

The fighting erupted Wednesday after the Tigray People’s Liberation Front joined six other armed groups in a new alliance aimed at overthrowing Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and installing a transitional government. Several of those groups fought on opposite sides of the 2020 to 2022 war.

Sudan’s military called the accusation “baseless,” said it would “not allow any infringement of its sovereignty” and urged Addis Ababa to “resort to dialogue.” It also fired back, accusing Ethiopia of helping the Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary group Sudan’s army has been fighting since 2023, with “training and supplies and the use of Ethiopian territory in military activities including strategic drones and suicide drones.” Egypt’s Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that Cairo respects other nations’ sovereignty and stays out of their internal politics, and it dismissed any suggestion otherwise as unfounded.

On the ground, Tigrayan forces have seized airports, including in the regional capital Mekelle, and pushed into Afar and Amhara, capturing the town of Erebti in what appears to be an effort to cut Ethiopia’s supply lines from Djibouti. The UN says five schools in Tigray were hit by Ethiopian air and drone strikes on Sept. 22, and one outlet put the number of people displaced in Afar at 150,000 or more. The UN has also received reports that the TPLF has been forcing civilians, including children, into its ranks.

This all comes as the fighting threatens the 2022 Pretoria peace deal that ended a war that some estimate killed 650,000 people.