36,000 flee Ethiopia's Moyale clashes into Kenya, UN refugee agency says

About 36,000 people have fled across the border from Ethiopia into Kenya to escape fighting between two Ethiopian regional forces around the town of Moyale, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said on Tuesday, October 27, 2026. Most of those arriving in Kenya's Marsabit County are women and children, and aid agencies say food, clean water and shelter are now the most pressing needs.

What happened

Moyale is a busy trading town that sits on the Ethiopia–Kenya border and straddles the internal boundary between Ethiopia's Oromia and Somali regions, which administer it jointly. Tensions flared in mid-October after a Somali regional flag was raised in the town. Security forces of the two regions then clashed, and the fighting spread to several districts of southern Oromia, where residents reported deaths, burned homes and families on the move.

UNHCR said "approximately 36,000 people" had crossed into Kenya fleeing violence in and around Moyale, and that there had been a significant increase in arrivals since Thursday, October 22. Some have found space with relatives or local families; others are in temporary sites on the Kenyan side of the border.

Measure	Figure	Source of figure
People who crossed into Kenya	about 36,000	UNHCR
People seeking refuge in Kenyan Moyale	about 40,000	Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR)
People in temporary shelters	more than 15,000, in 8 sites	KNCHR
People staying with relatives and hosts	more than 20,000	KNCHR
Births recorded in shelters	4	KNCHR

The temporary shelters include a Catholic church, a secondary school and a mosque compound in Kenyan Moyale. Trucks have been unable to move goods across the border in either direction, halting trade that the town depends on.

Several people have been killed in the clashes, but no official death toll has been published. Among the dead is a 13-year-old boy killed in an exchange of gunfire on October 18, according to local reports. Neither the Oromia nor the Somali regional government had issued a formal statement on the fighting by the end of last week.

Background

The boundary between Oromia and the Somali region is one of the most disputed internal borders in Ethiopia. The two regions fought deadly clashes along it in 2017 and 2018, which displaced hundreds of thousands of people, and a 2004 referendum meant to settle the ownership of many border villages never fully ended the dispute. Moyale itself has been split between the two administrations, which makes symbols such as flags especially sensitive.

The new fighting adds to a long list of security problems for Ethiopia, Africa's second most populous country with about 130 million people. Federal forces have fought armed groups in Oromia and Amhara for years, fighting has recently resumed in Tigray, and tension with neighbouring Eritrea has raised fears of a wider conflict. Earlier this week, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church said about 60 of its followers were killed in attacks in Oromia's Arsi zone.

Reactions

UNHCR said its "immediate priority" is to find and meet the urgent needs of people seeking safety, while also supporting the Kenyan communities hosting them. The agency is working with the UN's migration agency (IOM), the children's agency UNICEF, the World Food Programme and the Kenya Red Cross Society, under a response led by the Kenyan government.

The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights called for an "urgent, coordinated, rights-based response", asking for emergency medical care, food, safe water, weather-appropriate shelter and protection services. It warned that rain could make sanitation worse and raise the risk of disease in crowded sites, and urged authorities on both sides of the border to manage cross-border movement and tackle the causes of the displacement. It also asked security forces to act lawfully and without discrimination.

Why it matters

The scale of the movement is unusual for Moyale: tens of thousands of people crossed in little more than a week, into a dry, remote part of northern Kenya where water and food are already scarce. Host families who have taken in more than 20,000 people are under strain, and the halt in cross-border trade hits livelihoods on both sides.

For the wider Horn of Africa, the clashes are a warning that disputes between Ethiopia's own regional governments can quickly spill across international borders. Kenya already hosts more than 800,000 refugees, mainly from Somalia and South Sudan, and a long-running Ethiopian displacement would add to the pressure on aid budgets that have been cut sharply this year.

What happens next

Aid agencies are registering new arrivals and moving food, water and medical supplies to Moyale. Much depends on whether Ethiopia's federal government can calm the dispute between the two regions; until there is a ceasefire on the ground, few people are expected to return. The coming rains will be a test for the temporary shelters, and UN agencies are expected to issue an appeal if numbers keep rising.