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The Aksoum airport, located in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, was damaged on November 22, according to the Ethiopian news agency ENA, as part of the ongoing conflict between the Ethiopian army and the separatist Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). However, some of the photos circulating online that are said to show the airport were taken during the conflicts in Libya and Ukraine.
On November 22, the Ethiopian national press agency ENA reported that the Aksoum airport in the northern province of Tigray had been destroyed by “TPLF extremists,” or members of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. The Ethiopian army has been leading an offensive against this group for the past three weeks.
Images showing the damaged interior of an airport terminal were shared hundreds of times on Facebook the same day. In the post, the user regrets the destruction of Aksoum airport.
However, a reverse image search (click here to find out how) quickly shows that these images are not, in fact, from Aksoum airport. The first two photos show Tripoli airport in Libya. They were taken by the journalist Marine Olivesi on September 2, 2014:
This November 22 Facebook post also claims to show photos of the destroyed airport in Aksoum.
However, the photo below is actually a picture of the Donetsk airport in Ukraine. It was taken from a video filmed by CNN correspondents on February 2, 2015. The Facebook page Sidaama Today was quick to criticize the misuse of this image outside of its original context.
The airport terminal is still standing
Images posted on YouTube on November 23 by the Addis Media Network television channel show debris on the runway of Aksoum airport. However, you can see that the terminal building is intact.
Aksoum Airport has only one terminal, as shown on the Sleepinginairports website.
In fact, the runway at Aksoum airport was damaged; However, certain images that people have circulated on social media, claiming to show a damaged terminal, actually show other airports destroyed during past conflicts in Ukraine and Libya.
On November 4, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed launched an offensive against the TPLF, which tried to break away in September, in the Tigray region. A wave of refugees fleeing the fighting crossed the border into neighboring Sudan. On November 23, Abiy gave the TPLF an ultimatum, telling them they had three days to surrender. The fact that telephone and Internet connections have been closed in the region makes it extremely difficult for the media to cover the conflict.
After helping topple the Marxist Derg military regime in the late 1980s, the TPLF held power in Ethiopia for more than 30 years. Abiy, the first prime minister of the Oromo ethnic minority, took office in 2018 and won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for his work in promoting reconciliation between Ethiopia and neighboring Eritrea. Abiy’s reformed agenda has clashed with the TPLF’s entrenched military and economic influence in government institutions and has led to growing tensions between the government and this group.
