Ten Fighters Martyred in Dankalia ELF 1978 Response from ELF Leadership [Ahmed Nasser]
ERITREA IN THE WORLD AND ARABIC PRESS ELF INFORMATION BULLETIN Vol. 3 no. 1 June-August 1978
"Eritrean Revolution" P. 40-41
Ahmed Nasser:
Sabbe in an interview made with him by the Lebanese weekly Al-Hawadeth, said that leading elements of the ELF had been liquidated and he listed the names of these elements. Of course the matter was completely different from the Sabbe story.
The sabotage which he designed against the Revolution, came as a reaction to the unionist process with its democratic content which started between us and the EPLF. This process led to political polanization in the Eritran arena, and the reactionary elements in the ELF started aligning themselves with the Sabbe group.
He lost no time in attempting to exploit the situation by trying to effect a big military infiltration in the ELF strongholds north of Assab in the south of the Red Sea. He recruited in this operation three elements from the ELF. These later declared in a statement made in the beginning of May their going over to the reactionary group of Sabbe.
Even before their declaration, these elements had already started co-ordinating with Sabbe. This had been going on for a long period. The ELF leadership was in full knowledge of these developments. Accordingly, the ELF assigned some of its trusted elements to infiltrate the reactionary group in order to closely monitor and observe the situation.
The reactionary groups dropped north of Assab had been in possess of thousands of individual arms peices (Klashinkovs), 36 wireless communication sets and supplies that would suffice them for months in addition to the great sums of money they brought with them for bribing citizens.
The object of the operation was establishing an advanced bridge-head in the area and also start coordination with Sultan Ali Mirah in order that the Sultan would declare, after the establishment of the reactionary base, about its presence for furnishing a justification for the intervention of "foreign" military troops so as to liquidate the Eritrean democratic and progressive forces.
We foiled this reactionary project by resolutely liquidating these elements on May 22, 1978. The Eritrean Liberation Army units assigned this duty executed it perfectly. In our opinion such an operation will be repeated and there is an arsenal of Iranian, Morocan arms and arms from other Arab countries gathered and still flowing towards Hodeida port in North Yemen for the purpose.