Portal:Eritrea/Featured article
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The Red Sea is a seawater inlet of the Indian Ocean, lying between Africa and Asia. The connection to the ocean is in the south through the Bab el Mandeb strait and the Gulf of Aden. In the north, there is the Sinai Peninsula, the Gulf of Aqaba, and the Gulf of Suez (leading to the Suez Canal). The Red Sea is a Global 200 ecoregion. The water is not red, as the name may imply.
Occupying a part of the Great Rift Valley, the Red Sea has a surface area of roughly 438,000 km² (169,100 square miles). It is about 2250 km (1398 miles) long and, at its widest point, is 355 km (220.6 miles) wide. It has a maximum depth of 2211 metres (7254 feet) in the central median trench, and an average depth of 490 metres (1,608 feet). However, there are also extensive shallow shelves, noted for their marine life and corals. The sea is the habitat of over 1,000 invertebrate species, and 200 soft and hard corals. It is the world's northernmost tropical sea. (Read more...)
Featured article 2
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The Eritrean–Ethiopian War took place from May 1998 to June 2000 between Ethiopia and Eritrea, forming one of the conflicts in the Horn of Africa. Eritrea and Ethiopia — two of the world's poorest countries — spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the war, and suffered tens of thousands of casualties as a direct consequence of the conflict, which resulted in minor border changes.
According to a ruling by an international commission in The Hague, Eritrea broke international law and triggered the war by invading Ethiopia.
At the end of the war Ethiopia held all of the disputed territory and had advanced into Eritrea. After the war ended Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission, a body founded by the UN, established that Badme, the disputed territory at the heart of the conflict, belongs to Eritrea. As of 2009, Ethiopia still occupies the territory. (Read more...)
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Asmara (English) (Ge'ez: ኣስመራ Asmera, formerly known as Asmera, or in Arabic: أسمرا Asmara, meaning "Live in Peace" in Tigre) is the capital city and largest settlement in Eritrea, home to a population of around 579,000 people. At an elevation of 2,400 meters (7 874 ft), Asmara is on the edge of an escarpment that is both the northwestern edge of the Great Rift Valley and of the Eritrean highlands. Textiles and clothing, processed meat, beer, shoes, and ceramics are the major industrial products. Asmara started with four villages, to being a regional center under Emperor Yohannes IV of Ethiopia, to "Little Rome" of Benito Mussolini's unsuccessful second Roman Empire, to being a provincial capital under Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia and lastly a national capital of Eritrea. (Read more...)
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The Eritrean War of Independence (1 September 1961 – 24 May 1991) was a conflict fought between the Ethiopian government and Eritrean separatists, both before and during the Ethiopian Civil War.
The war went on for 30 years until 1991 when the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF), having defeated the Ethiopian forces in Eritrea, took control of the country. In April 1993, in a referendum supported by Ethiopia, the Eritrean people voted almost unanimously in favour of independence. Formal international recognition of an independent and sovereign Eritrea followed later the same year.
The two main rebel groups fought two Eritrean civil wars during the war of liberation. (Read more...)
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Portal:Eritrea/Featured article/5 Tigrinya ( ትግርኛ, tigriññā), also spelled Tigrigna, Tigrina, Tigriña, less commonly Tigrinian, Tigrinyan, is a Semitic language spoken by the Tigray-Tigrinya people in central Eritrea (there referred to as the "Tigrinya" people), where it is one of the two dominant languages of Eritrea, and in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia (whose speakers are called "Tigray"), where it has official status, and among groups of emigrants from these regions, including some of the Beta Israel now living in Israel. Tigrinya is also spoken by the Jeberti (Muslim Tigrinya) in Eritrea. Tigrinya should not be confused with the related Tigre language, which is spoken in the lowland regions in Eritrea to the north and west of the region where Tigrinya is spoken. (Read more...)
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Portal:Eritrea/Featured article/6 Italian Eritrea was a colony of the Kingdom of Italy in the territory of present-day Eritrea. Although it was formally created in 1890, the first Italian settlements in the area were established in 1882 around Assab. The colony officially lasted until 1947.[1] (Read more...)
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The Eritrean Railway is the only railway system in Eritrea. It was constructed between 1887 and 1932 by the Kingdom of Italy for the Italian Eritrea colony and connected the port of Massawa with Asmara and Bishia near the Sudan border. The line was destroyed by warfare in subsequent decades, but has been rebuilt between Massawa and Asmara. Vintage equipment is still used on the line. (Read more...)
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Portal:Eritrea/Featured article/8 The Sultanate of Dahlak was a small Medieval kingdom covering the Dahlak Archipelago and parts of the African Red Sea coast in what is now Eritrea. First attested in 1093, it quickly profited from its location between Abyssinia and Yemen as well as Egypt and India. After the mid 13th century Dahlak lost its trade monopoly and subsequently started to decline. Both the Ethiopian empire and Yemen tried to enforce their authority over the sultanate. It was eventually annexed by the Ottomans in 1557, who made it part of their Abyssinian province. (Read more...)