MORNING WATCH — OCTOBER 8
Armed Conflict · · Ethiopia
MORNING WATCH — OCTOBER 8
Three things to watch this morning:
🇪🇹🇪🇷 The Ethiopia–Eritrea situation is getting much more dangerous.
There are now several reports that Eritrean troops have crossed into northern Tigray.
Two residents in Adigrat said they saw two trucks carrying dozens of Eritrean soldiers through the town on October 7. A commander from the government-aligned Tigray Peace Force separately told that Eritrean troops entered Adigrat on October 6 and Idaga Hamus a day later.
ACLED says Eritrean troops crossed at Zelambesa on October 7 and were later hit by drones attributed to the Ethiopian military around Guada.
If this report holds up, this is a very different situation from the one we were watching a few days ago.
Until now, the argument was largely about Eritrean support for the TPLF and whether Asmara might intervene more directly. We may now be looking at Eritrean soldiers physically inside Ethiopia and potentially already coming under Ethiopian attack.
That is exactly how the Tigray war starts becoming an interstate crisis rather than just another phase of Ethiopia’s internal conflict.
I’d still be careful with the scale. Two trucks and several reported crossings do not tell us whether this is a limited deployment, reconnaissance, reinforcement of local allies or the beginning of something much larger.
And we still don’t know whether Eritrean forces are coordinating directly with the TPLF.
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🇮🇷 Hormuz is starting to hurt shipping again.
At least 12 attacks against tankers and LNG/LPG carriers were recorded in the week ending October 5, according to maritime-security data cited by Reuters the highest weekly total since the war began.
There was another incident in the last 24 hours.
The Antigua and Barbuda-flagged chemical tanker Acers was hit by several projectiles around 51 nautical miles off Qatar. UKMTO reported the incident, while maritime-security sources said some crew members suffered minor injuries.
More important than the headline number, though, is what shipowners are doing.
Traffic through Hormuz has now fallen to its lowest level in more than two months.
The next thing to watch is whether Iran actually begins enforcing the restrictions it announced near the Omani side of the strait. Seizures, repeated interdictions or another sharp fall in traffic would tell us this is moving from harassment into something more systematic.
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🇹🇼🇨🇳 One more thing that is new to us, even though it happened in August.
Reuters has published an investigation into what appears to be the first known sighting of a Chinese maritime-militia vessel off Taiwan’s east coast.
A private surveillance aircraft operated by Taiwan’s Apex Aviation spotted the fishing vessel Minfudingyu 07902 more than 30 nautical miles off Hualien in mid-August.
It was in the same area as Chinese Coast Guard vessel 2502 and the research ship Xiang Yang Hong 03. Two Taiwanese officials confirmed the vessel identifications to Reuters.
So seeing a militia-linked fishing vessel there alongside Chinese state vessels is worth noting.
But I wouldn’t jump from one sighting to “China is rehearsing the blockade.”
We don’t know whether the three ships were operating together, how long they stayed there or whether this has happened repeatedly without being detected.
If militia vessels start appearing east of Taiwan regularly, alongside Coast Guard or research ships, then we may be looking at a real expansion of China’s maritime presence around the island.
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🇾🇪 Yemen / Saudi Arabia
The Houthis have claimed another ballistic-missile attack on King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh. AP reports explosions, evacuations and a temporary closure, while Saudi authorities say several missiles were intercepted.
Source: @GeoInsider
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