Battle of Mek'ele

Overview

The siege of Mekelle, sometimes known as the battle of Mekelle, took place in January 1896 during the First Italo-Ethiopian War. Italian forces surrendered a partially completed fort at Mekelle, a city in the northern Tigray Region of Ethiopia which they had occupied since 1895, to Ethiopian forces.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Significance

The surrender at Mek'ele in January 1896 marked a significant setback for Italy during the First Italo-Ethiopian War. A garrison of roughly 1,300 Italian troops under Giuseppe Galliano yielded a partially completed fort to an Ethiopian force of approximately 27,000 commanded by Menelik II. The fall of Mek'ele, a city in the northern Tigray Region that Italian forces had held since 1895, demonstrated the limits of Italy's operational position in the Ethiopian interior and underscored the scale of the military imbalance it faced. The engagement formed part of the sequence of reverses that would culminate in the broader Italian defeat in the campaign.

Forces & casualties

Commanders (2)