Mekelle፡Telaviv, Nairobi, Pretoria, London, (Tigray Herald)
Special Memorial Edition
preserving all key facts and themes—emotional weight, political urgency,
historical clarity, and moral authority—for publication in Horn of Africa Geopolitical Review and Tigray Herald as a Special Memorial Edition:
“Where It Hurts Most”
The Ayder School Bombing and the 27-Year Eritrean War Against the People of Tigray
The infamous words of the Eritrean Air Force pilot who bombed a school full of children.
A Special Commemorative Editorial
By Horn of Africa Geopolitical Review
In partnership with Tigray Herald
June 7, 2025
Prepared by leading regional and international political, security, and legal experts
I. A Tragedy Etched in Memory
June 5, 1998—a date seared into the consciousness of Tigrayans, Ethiopians, and global citizens who cherish justice.
On that day, the Eritrean Air Force, under the direct orders of dictator Isaias Afwerki, launched an unprovoked aerial assault on Mekelle, the capital of Tigray. The most egregious target: Ayder Elementary School.
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As innocent children sat in their classrooms, a fighter jet dropped cluster bombs—munitions
banned under international humanitarian law—obliterating the school and turning a center of learning into a scene of unspeakable carnage.
Fifty-three schoolchildren and civilians were killed.
Hundreds wounded.
Many left permanently disabled.
Entire families shattered. A city traumatized.
This was not collateral damage. It was a calculated war crime, designed to terrorize a people.The pilot, later praised by the Eritrean regime, would chillingly declare:
“I hit them where it really hurts.”
The world looked on, aghast. Tigray mourned in solemn silence.
Twenty-seven years later, we still carry the wounds, but we refuse to forget.
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After the Eritrean🇪🇷 Air Force deliberately twin bombed an elementary school in Tigray, Eritrean mothers cheered the next day, saying “Didn’t we tell you, you Agames”, the children are saying “In Mekelle, we buried you”. The bombing killed 54, including children, and injured 184
II. A Crime Against Humanity: The Broader Contex
The Ayder School Bombing was not an isolated event—it was a strategic act of state-sponsored terrorism, part of a broader campaign of ethnic hatred, aggression, and extermination waged by the Eritrean regime.
1983–1984: During the catastrophic famine, the EPLF—precursor to today’s PFDJ
regime—deliberately blocked food corridors to Tigray, causing the deaths of tens of thousands.
June 1998: Eritrean airstrikes targeted civilian infrastructure in Mekelle and other parts of
northern Ethiopia.
2018–2020: Afwerki was the leadig architecture of Tigray’s genocidal war
with the Ethiopian federal military and extremist Amhara militias in preparation for war against Tigray.
2020–2022: The Tigray Genocide—Eritrean troops led brutal campaigns of ethnic cleansing, rape, looting, and mass
killings under the cover of the war.
Ayder was merely the opening chapter in a genocidal playbook that continues today. What occurred was not war—it was premeditated extermination.
III. Brotherhood Betrayed: The Paradox of Shared Blood and State Brutality
In a devastating paradox, Tigrayans have never seen ordinary Eritreans as enemies. Despite decades of aggression, they maintained a sense of shared identity rooted in language, history, and cultural kinship. Even after Ayder, there was no call for vengeance—only grief, dignity, and restraint.
Yet, while Tigrayans extended compassion, Isaias Afwerki sent bombs. He transformed bonds of kinship into instruments of genocide. Eritrean soldiers, many
conscripts, were ordered to commit atrocities in Tigray: massacres in Axum, extrajudicial killings in Adwa, the razing of villages, the desecration of religious institutions. Afwerki did not just wage war—he waged psychological annihilation. His regime has now become the single most persistent existential threat to Tigray’s survival.
IV. Unholy Alliances: TPLF Factions and the Butcher of Ayder
In what can only be described as a historical and moral abomination, elements within the
Debretsion Gebremichael-led TPLF splinter group are reportedly re-engaging with the very
regime responsible for the Ayder massacre. This unthinkable political alliance—a death pact for personal survival—comes at the cost of truth, justice, and the memory of martyred children.
How does one embrace the hands that dropped bombs on first graders?
How do political actors who once labeled Isaias Afwerki a war criminal now negotiate with him in whispers and shadows?
This is not reconciliation. It is treason against the dead.
A betrayal of a wounded nation’s soul.
A moral collapse that must be exposed and condemned.
V. Strategic Imperatives: For Tigray to Survive, It Must Transform
The Ayder bombing was not only a humanitarian atrocity—it was a geopolitical signal. It announced Isaias Afwerki’s ambition: the permanent subjugation and destruction of Tigray.
To ensure survival:
The Eritrean regime must face international justice.The corrupt factions of the old TPLF must be dismantled and removed from public life.Tigray must rise through new leadership—rooted in integrity, vision, and generational renewal. The international community must be mobilized to confront complicity and inertia.
Ayder was not a battlefield. It was a crime scene.
And justice delayed remains justice denied.
VI. In Memory, In Resistance, In Renewal
As we mark 27 years since the Ayder School Massacre, we honor the children who never
returned home—their dreams, their innocence, their legacy.
Their blood is not forgotten.
Their memory is not buried.
Their voices echo through every village that resisted, every family that endured, every child who
now learns in rebuilt schools.
“We will never forget. We will never repeat again.
This is no slogan.
It is a vow.
A sacred covenant between the living and the lost.
VII. Final Words: Justice Must Prevail
The bombing of Ayder School was a blatant violation of international law—a war crime and an act of terrorism by a sovereign state. Yet, nearly three decades later, there has been no
accountability.
We call on:
The United Nations to launch a special tribunal on the Ayder massacre and related crimes against humanity.
The African Union to condemn the Eritrean regime’s destabilization of the Horn of Africa and its decades-long atrocities.
The European Union and United States to impose targeted sanctions against the Eritrean leadership and any Ethiopian political factions collaborating with it.
The Tigrayan people and leadership to enshrine the memory of Ayder’s children in all political discourse, ensuring a new era of justice-based governance.
Prepared and Published by
Horn of Africa Geopolitical Review
In collaboration with the Editorial Board of Tigray Herald
Special Memorial Edition
In Commemoration of the Martyrs of the Ayder School Bombing – June 5, 1998
We will never forget. And we will never repeat again.”
We remember. We resist. We rebuild
