Italian conquest of the Horn of Africa (1924–1940) and Buna. The Ethiopians recorded 275,000 combatants killed in action, 78,500 patriots (guerrilla fighters) killed during the occupation, 17,800 civilians killed by aerial bombardment and 30,000 in the February 1937 massacre, 35,000 people died in concentration camps, 24,000 patriots executed by Summary Courts, 300,000 persons died of privation due to the destruction of their villages, amounting to 760,300 deaths. Italian conquest of the Horn of Africa (1924–1940) The Italian conquest of the Horn of Africa was initiated in 1924 by the fascist government of Italy under Benito Mussolini. With great brutality, Somalia had been totally pacified by late 1927. In
Horn of Africa combat troops. In 1989, the Tigrayan Peoples' Liberation Front (TPLF) merged with other ethnically based opposition movements to form the Ethiopian Peoples' Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), and eventually managed to overthrow Mengistu's dictatorial regime in 1991. A transitional government, composed of an 87-member Council of Representatives and guided by a national charter that functioned as a transitional constitution, was then set up. The first free and democratic election took place later in 1995, when Ethiopia's longest-serving Prime Minister Meles Zenawi was elected to office. As with other nations in the Horn region, Ethiopia maintained its historically close relations with countries