In light of the recent successful Ethiopian Air Force mission against the Sawa military training camp, it is no surprise to see the Eritrean propaganda machine accusing Ethiopia of deliberately targeting civilians.

This is nonsense. It is very easy to bomb civilian areas and kill many innocent people. Eritrea proved this when it bombed the Ayder school in Mekele twice within the span of one hour on June 5, 1999.

Building on its barbaric activity in Mekele, the Eritreans next bombed Adigrat on June 14. One of the targets was the Adigrat pharmaceutical factory - Eritrea has admitted that it intended to destroy the factory while the workers were still inside (AP, June 20, 1998). The other intended target is still a mystery, however a food warehouse was destroyed, four civilians were killed and many injured as an Eritrean plane made a single pass over the center of Adigrat and then fled over the horizon.

Compared to the disgusting behavior of the Eritrean pilots, the professionalism of the Ethiopian air force and its minimization of civilian casualties has been impressive. It would have been very easy to bomb the centers of several Eritrean towns and massacre hundreds of Eritreans. But retaliation for the Mekele massacre was ruled out. Instead the Ethiopian Air Force has been carrying out many low level ground support missions at considerable risks to the pilots.

Also, on two days of successive missions against the Eritrean Air Force base at Asmara, the Ethiopian Air Force maintained the safety of the civilian population by making repeated passes over the target area for target identification and precision bombing.

The contrast with the barbaric Eritrean attitude is revealing: "One to one-hundred - that's the exchange rate" declared Eritrean Air Force Commander HabteZion Hadgu in June 1998 (Reuters, June 9, 1998). That was how he saw his mission - to massacre Ethiopian civilians.

Of course, during any military operation, there is a risk of mistaking a target or missing a target. As we have seen on April 15, it appears that 11 Eritrean civilians were injured in one of the three air-strikes conducted by the Ethiopian Air Force. This is deeply regrettable, although we are glad that the initial false report by the Eritrean government that two civilians were killed did not pan out.

On the other hand, the impressive, large-scale raid on the Sawa military camp was highly successful as evidenced by the video footage. The Ethiopian Air Force should be commended for the job they are doing against Eritrea's military machine. It is through the use of air power that this conflict can be brought to a close with the least amount of suffering on the part of both Ethiopians and Eritreans.

- Dagmawi