Part of the North Western Zone, La'ilay Adiyabo is bordered on the south by Tahtay Koraro, on the southwest by Asigede Tsimbela, on the northwest by Tahtay Adiyabo, on the northeast by the Mareb River which separates it from Eritrea, on the east by the Central Zone, and on the southeast by Medebay Zana.

Two battles of the Ethiopian Civil War were fought in or near Addi Nebreid by rival groups rebelling against the Derg regime.

In July 1976, 500 soldiers of the Ethiopian Democratic Union were surrounded and defeated near Addi Nebreid by an armed group of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) under Mehari Tekle ("Mussie").

The fighting raged for two days until the TPLF units, by that point out of ammunition, retreated in good order having inflicted substantial losses on their rivals.

"From then on," writes Aregawi Berhe, one of the TPLF commanders in the battle, "the EDU could not proceed through TPLF-held territory without paying a heavy cost to mobilize the feudal and shifta elements in the central region and beyond.