The Battle of Afabet, fought from March 17 to 20, 1988, was a pivotal military engagement in the Eritrean War of Independence. The Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) launched a major offensive against the Ethiopian army's Nadew Command, a large and well-equipped division stationed around the town of Afabet in northern Eritrea.
In a carefully planned operation, EPLF forces successfully encircled and destroyed the Nadew Command. The Ethiopian army suffered a catastrophic defeat, losing an estimated 18,000 soldiers killed, wounded, or captured, along with massive quantities of weapons and equipment. The EPLF captured three major Ethiopian army bases.
The victory at Afabet is widely considered the turning point of the 30-year war. It demonstrated the EPLF's growing military strength and shattered the morale of the Ethiopian forces, which were backed by the Soviet Union and Cuba at the time. The battle shifted the strategic initiative decisively to the Eritrean side.
The defeat contributed significantly to the eventual collapse of the Marxist Derg regime in Ethiopia and paved the way for Eritrea's de facto independence in 1991, followed by formal international recognition in 1993 after a UN-supervised referendum.
