Abala, Ethiopia: History
Werner Munzinger visited Abala in June 1867 (which he calls Ala), and mentions that it was the home of Hodeli, chief of the Dumhoeta Afar, as well as the location of a weekly market on Saturday primarily in salt.
Records at the Nordic Africa Institute website mention the existence of an English mission school, and a church dedicated to Saint Michael.
In July 2010, the Ethiopian Roads Authority awarded the contract to construct a 63-kilometer gravel road from Abala to Shaigubi to Sur Construction, which is owned by the Endowment Fund for the Rehabilitation of Tigray. The contract was worth 707 million Birr. The contract for a second road 109 kilometers in length, from Shaigubi through Male to Dalol, was awarded to Defence Construction and Engineering Enterprise, a division of the Ministry of Defense, and was worth 185 million Birr. These two roads would enable Salnik Coal Mining Plc, an Indian company, to extract potash from its concession at Dallol in the Afar Depression.
On December 24, 2021, after a long battle between the Tigray Defense Forces and the Ethiopian military, Ethiopian armed forces entered the town and committed a massacre. Soldiers travelled from door to door as they killed anybody who was of Tigrayan ethnicity. Non-Tigrayans (mainly composed of Afar people) were left alone. Most of the survivors fled the scene or hid in Afar homes during the massacre, which lasted for five days. At least 278 people were killed in the fighting, which was reported to have been the location of mass rape and looting by Ethiopian and Afar forces. Witnesses reported that bulldozers had dumped hundreds of bodies into nearby