 However, the TPLF has recently revealed that approximately 50,000 people died as a direct result of combat, 99% per cent of them fighters and militia members, and this number also includes those killed in the Red Terror.In spite of the military setback caused by the famine of 1984-85, the vast majority of the peasantry were irrevocably wedded to the TPLF and it was clear that the Derg did not have the capacity to defeat its northern-based opposition.With the stabilization of the rural economy resulting from better harvests and the return of some refugees from the Sudan, the TPLF was soon able to re-exert its control over the rural areas and resume the siege of the towns.