The Ethiopian army has killed four senior members of the former Tigray region’s ruling party, state-affiliated media reported late Thursday.

Ethiopian National Defense Force’s Deployment Department Head, Brigadier General Tesfaye Ayalew told Ethiopian News Agency that they included TPLF spokesperson Sekoture Getachew.

The army claimed that Getachew had publicly admitted saying “lightning pre-emptive attack” against the Northern Command of the Ethiopian National Defense Force.

According to the army, former Ethiopian Television and Broadcast Authority General Director, Zeray Asgedom and several other top leaders of the TPLF have been killed.

The Ethiopian news agency reported that nine members of the TPLF, who led the region until being overthrown last year in the military campaign have been arrested.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced the military campaign against the TPLF on November 4, saying it came in response to TPLF-orchestrated attacks on federal army camps.

Abiy declared victory after federal forces took the regional capital Mekele in late November, but the UN says clashes persist in the region which remains very difficult to access for the media and humanitarians.

The leader of the TPLF, Debretsion Gebremichael, and other leaders of the party have been on the run since Mekele fell, and the army is offering a reward of 10 million Ethiopian Birr roughly $250,000 for information leading to their capture.

The TPLF dominated Ethiopian politics for three decades until the arrival of Abiy who was appointed in 2018 and progressively sidelined them.

Abiy has now appointed a new regional government in Tigray and declared an official end to the operation in November.

The fighting in Tigray has left thousands dead, according to the International Crisis Group (ICG) think tank, and sent tens of thousands of refugees streaming across the border into Sudan.