The Ethiopian army announced that it had killed four senior officials of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), the dissident region in northern Ethiopia where the Addis Ababa government sent its troops in early November, reports Fana broadcaster. BC, affiliated with power.
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Ethiopian soldiers also captured nine other members of this party which ruled Tigray before being overthrown by Addis Ababa, said General Tesfaye Aylew, in a communication on Thursday evening.
A spokesperson for the TPLF, Sekoture Getachew, and the former head of the party's financial office, Daniel Assefa, were killed during the operation, the soldier said.
Former Ethiopian Media Authority (EBA) director Zeray Asgedom and a journalist close to the party, Abebe Asgedom, are also dead.
TPLF leader Debretsion Gebremichael and the main party leaders have still been on the run since late November and the fall of the regional capital of Tigray, Mekele.
In mid-December, the Ethiopian army announced that it would offer a reward of around 200,000 euros for information allowing them to be located.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed launched this military operation against Tigray on November 4, after months of tensions between the central government and the TPLF.
At the helm of Tigray, this party previously held the levers of power for nearly 30 years in the federal capital Addis Ababa and has been gradually marginalized by Abiy Ahmed since coming to power in 2018.
After his offensive, the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize winner installed a new administration in Tigray and declared the official end of his military operation at the end of November.
Since then, Tigray has remained very difficult to access for the United Nations, journalists and humanitarian organizations.
No precise record of the conflict in Tigray is available, but the fighting has pushed more than 50,000 people to seek refuge in neighboring Sudan and has displaced more than 63,000 inside the region, according to the UN.