DOMINANT ANGLE
Stockholm is first considering the human cost of the escalation in Tigray, four years after the 600,000 deaths of the previous war.
Dominant angle identified — does not reflect unanimity of this country’s media
KEY POINTS
- 01
Ethiopian Airlines has suspended, according to Sveriges Radio, all its flights to Tigray "på obestämd tid" (until further notice) after the rebels of the TPLF took control of Mekele airport.
- 02
An anonymous doctor running a hospital in Mekele, quoted by Sveriges Radio, describes an "ohållbar" (untenable) humanitarian situation as wounded from the fighting pour in.
- 03
Amanuel Assefa, TPLF vice-president, told AFP (as reported by Aftonbladet) that fighting is taking place in Tigray, Afar, and Amhara in a state of "total war"; the 2020-2022 war had 600,000 fatalities.
ANALYSIS
Stockholm, September 24, 2026. From the studios of Sveriges Radio, the Ethiopian crisis is told primarily through the voices of Mekele residents rather than those of chancelleries. Neither the UN nor the European Union is mentioned in the Swedish dispatches published in recent hours: it is an anonymous doctor and a correspondent in East Africa who carry the story.
The Swedish public service reports that the rebels of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) have taken control of Mekele airport, prompting the national carrier Ethiopian Airlines to suspend, in its words, "på obestämd tid" (until further notice) all its flights to the region. A doctor who runs a hospital in the city, where wounded people from the fighting between the army and the rebels are being treated, describes to Sveriges Radio a situation that is constantly deteriorating: "Läget är spänt och det blir bara värre och värre. Den humanitära situationen är ohållbar", he says, anonymously - the situation is tense and only getting worse, the humanitarian situation is unbearable.
The tabloid Aftonbladet, citing AFP, relays the words of Amanuel Assefa, vice-president of the TPLF: the fighting now affects three regions, Tigray, Afar, and Amhara, and the two camps are engaged in a "fullskaligt krig", a total war, against government forces. According to him, sporadic clashes had been going on for months before intensifying in recent days.
Sveriges Radio's Africa correspondent, Mona Ismail Jama, who has collected testimonies on the ground, recalls that the government had sought to contain the rebels within Tigray, before reports emerged of a rebel advance into neighboring regions, to which Addis Ababa allegedly responded with drone strikes on targets within Tigray itself. She emphasizes that the local population fears a return to total war, remembering the 2020-2022 conflict, which killed 600,000 people.
None of the three Swedish articles consulted mentions the UN or EU calls for restraint, or the American threat of sanctions relayed elsewhere: the prism retained in Stockholm remains that of the terrain, of cut-off flights and food stocks, rather than that of Western capitals.
