Ethiopian gov’t trash TPLF claim that it downed a fighter helicopter
borkena
The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) on Thursday claimed that it downed a fighter helicopter in the Mille, Afar region, front where the TPLF forces have been attempting to control the route to Djibouti.
TPLF spokesperson, Getachew Reda, in a twitter message said “Our anti aircraft units in the #Mille front have downed an MI-35 helicopter gunship this morning. #TigrayShallPrevail!”
Our anti aircraft units in the #Mille front have downed an MI-35 helicopter gunship this morning.#TigrayShallPrevail!
— Getachew K Reda (@reda_getachew) November 11, 2021
The information is also shared on the official social media page of TPLF.
TPLF supporters have been sharing the news widely with an image of a helicopter being downed. Investigation of the image, however, revealed that the helicopter in the image was from the war with ISIS in Iraq in 2016.
The Ethiopian government fact check task force, which was instituted soon after the war started over a year ago with the objective to provide accurate information to the public, said the TPLF claim on Thursday that it has downed a fighter helicopter is a false information.
” We would like to announce that the image used for the claim, today on the official TPLF terrorist group page, that the Tigray army shot down a helicopter around 4:47 [10:47 local time] is taken from social media and was posted in 2016. Let us protect ourselves from TPLF’s ‘white lies’!” said the brief statement from the task force.
No other media entities covered the story at this writing.
However, it is trending on social media among Ethiopians and it is understood to be TPLF’s latest lie.
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Yesterday AFP had reported an earlier ‘story telling’ by the operatives of Debre where they showed civilian homes burned to the ground in Mekele by the ENDF air raid. The narration of the depicted video was done in Oromiffa. But AFP’s fact checking unit discovered that the video was actually what was posted by a local media outlet about a shoe store that caught fire in Addis/Finfine on October 30, 2021. AFP did not mince a word about this by certifying it as ‘false’. Here is the link. news.yahoo.com/footage-shows-burning-building-ethiopias-133346725.html. I found it right there on Yahoo.
The government has severally contradicted itself. When you say Eritrean forces are not in Tigray then later you accept then it creates doubts. Both parties in the war have histories of presenting half truths. Well you may cut off communication for various reasons which are deemed strategic but in any war, accountability and verification of facts are vital which have not come out directly.