Shire (ሽሬ), also known as Inda Selassie (እንዳ ሥላሴ, Tigrinya "House of the Trinity"), is a town in northern Ethiopia. The administrative center of the Mirabawi Zone[1] of the Tigray region, this town has a latitude and longitude of with an altitude of 1953 meters above sea level. The town possesses an airport, Shire Airport (IATA code SHC). Based on figures from the Central Statistical Agency in 2005, Shire has an estimated total population of 43,967 of whom 21,333 were males and 22,634 were females.[2] According to the 1994 national census the town had a population of 25,269. It is the largest town in Tahtay Koraro woreda. This town had been the capital of the Shire sub-region until the administrative reorganization of the nation after the adoption of the 1995 Ethiopian Constitution. Shire was a battlefield in both the Second Italo-Abyssinian War in the 1930s and during the Ethiopian Civil War, until the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front ejected the government forces in March 1988. The third edition of Lonely Planet guide to Ethiopia notes that "war relics" could still be seen near Shire.[3] The first clash of the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front (TPLF) with government forces occurred in late July 1975, when Mehari Tekle, a member of the leadership, was arrested and taken to prison in Shire. In the first offensive action of the TPLF, a squad of eleven men burst into the prison, killed two policemen, and freed him.[4]
Notes
- ^ At least in 1998, per EUE: Tigray Evacuees, 12/98
- ^ CSA 2005 National Statistics, Table B.4
- ^ Matt Philips and Jean-Bernard Carillet, Ethiopia and Eritrea, third edition (n.p.: Lonely Planet, 2006), p. 131
- ^ "Local History in Ethiopia" (pdf) The Nordic Africa Institute website (accessed 27 November 2007)
