A Facebook post, published with three pictures, on Jan 17, claimed that Fano (volunteer youth patriots) and local militia checked the movements of the departing federal government army. According to the post, the federal army was leaving the area with the command of the army Chief-of-Staff following the approach of TPLF forces which supposedly intended to re-control the town.
The post was shared by close to three hundred users at the time this article was published.
However, HaqCheck fact-checked the three images used to support the claim and found out that from the set of images including three pictures, the two were taken from sources dated 4-8 years ago and don’t prove the claim, while the third image can not be found. Therefore, the post is rendered PARTLY FALSE.
The war which erupted between Tigray People Liberation Front (TPLF) forces and the federal government in Nov 2020 is still protracted. The federal government withdrew from Mekelle in June 2020. Thereafter, TPLF forces advanced southward and expanded their control as far as Debre Sina town of the Amhara Regional State.
In Nov 2021, the Ethiopian Government launched counter-offensives against TPLF forces and pushed them out of the Amhara and Afar regional states.
At the end of its operation, the government announced that its forces would not advance further into Tigray. It stated its forces would stay in areas the Tigray Regional State shares borders with Amhara and Afar regions.
A regional state media affiliated with the TPLF claimed that Amhara and Afar regional armed forces and Eritrean armed units were trying to penetrate and enter into Tigray.
It was in this context the post was published with the images.
According to HaqCheck’s inspection, the first image was first posted on 16 Dec 2015 in an article about the then youth protests against the rule of the EPRDF regime. The link to the first image can be found here.
The third image out of the three images was taken from a Facebook post in Mar 2019. The post shared the image with a claim to show people blocking the road that connects Bahir Dar and Hamusit. Here is a link to the original image.
However, we could not find the second image that is shared to support the post’s claim.
Therefore, HaqCheck rated the post PARTLY FALSE due to the usage of inaccurate images to prove the claim.
