The Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) had attacked the Nadew Command a few months previously, with limited success. On 8 December 1987, the EPLF had attacked one of the divisions of the Command, the Twenty-second, with a force that may have contained as many as five infantry brigades, one mechanized battalion and three heavy-weapon battalions. On the second day of the assault, Eritrean infiltrators destroyed the divisional control center. It required the assistance of the Nineteenth Mountain Infantry Division and the 45th Infantry Brigade to halt further advances and repel the EPLF forces. Ethiopian losses in this preliminary engagement were 842 killed, 291 wounded and 615 missing; Eritrean losses have been estimated at 125 killed and 269 wounded. However, the Ethiopian side suffered even graver losses in the aftermath: on Mengistu Haile Mariam's order twenty senior officers were transferred and the commander of the Nadew Command, General Tariku Ayne, who had been absent from Afabet for medical treatment, was executed outside of Asmara on 15 February 1988. The death of one of Ethiopia's most prominent generals surprised even the EPLF, whose Radio of the Masses broadcast that the Derg had "cut off its right hand with its left hand". The Twenty-second Division was moved to Keren, and replaced with the Fourteenth Infantry Division.