Old footage resurfaces as false proof of Ethiopian troop captures in Tigray clashes
ADDIS ABABA — A string of Facebook posts shared hundreds of times in August 2026 claims to show Ethiopian federal soldiers captured by Tigrayan forces during the latest clashes in northern Ethiopia. That narrative does not hold up: both clips were published before, and neither appears connected to the fighting that erupted in the Shirena area earlier this month.
Renewed hostilities have raised tensions sharply since the beginning of August. The federal army and fighters loyal to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) exchanged fire in Shirena, near the Sudanese border, on Aug. 1, and local officials later reported a federal drone strike on a residential neighborhood in Mekele, the regional capital. The violence has rattled the fragile calm that followed the 2022 Pretoria agreement.
One of the misleading posts, shared more than 450 times, carries an Amharic caption saying “Abiy Ahmed’s invading red-beret soldiers captured by Tigray forces TDF at the Shirerina front.” The three-minute video shows men in red berets sitting on the ground while several others speak to the camera. One man says he was shot and surrendered; another describes being encircled and giving up. They all praise their treatment and urge a peaceful settlement.
The second video, published on Facebook in Somali, was shared more than 370 times. It shows troops in Ethiopian army uniforms walking through a forested area, some with their hands raised. A Somali-language narrator claims they are “some of the Ethiopian troops who were captured by Tigrayan forces while fighting in the battle for Shirerina in the western Tigray region.”
Neither clip is recent. A reverse-image search on frames from the red-beret video turned up a longer version posted on Sept. 4, 2022 by Dimtsi Weyane Television, a TPLF-affiliated outlet. That broadcast opens with a presenter saying the men are soldiers of Abiy Ahmed “who launched fighting on the western front to eliminate the Tigray people on Aug. 24, 2022.” The 2026 Facebook post cuts that opening segment, creating the false impression that the footage is from this month. The same four soldiers appear in the original at the same points in the video.
The second clip also predates the current Tigray conflict. A version of the footage was already online on May 17, 2026, with an Amharic caption claiming the soldiers had been captured in the Amhara region, where government forces have been battling the Fano militia. Anchor Media, a US-based pro-Fano YouTube channel, reported similar claims two days earlier after operations in the Wollo area. A comparison of key frames shows the same men, tree lines and terrain visible in both the May video and the August post.
The timing matters because the social media environment around the conflict has become increasingly toxic. Kjetil Tronvoll, a professor of peace and conflict studies at Oslo New University College, told the fact-check team that “the use of disinformation has become a tool of warfare in Ethiopia. It serves to increase hostility and reinforce enemy images.” He added that this problem is now more widespread than during the 2020–2022 war, and that it “inhibits efforts toward de-escalation.”
The latest exchange of fire is a reminder of how little remains settled. Ethiopia’s federal government and the TPLF fought a devastating war that killed an estimated 600,000 people before signing the Pretoria agreement in November 2022. But the political grievances that fed that conflict were never fully resolved, and a separate rebellion in Amhara, led by the Fano militia, has kept the security situation volatile. False posts that purport to show enemy soldiers being captured feed those pressures.
The clip from 2022 is a particularly transparent example: the original broadcast explicitly dates the events it describes. The May 2026 video also lacks any connection to Tigray. In each case, the editing or reframing of old footage appears designed to give a digital-age siege narrative a fresh coat of credibility.