Once Abdella Idris realized that he is losing his dominance in the ELF leadership, he start maneuvering ploys against other members of the leadership. Before his supporters lowered their guns, he took them to one secret place, while he called the members of the other group to another place for a meeting. There, he ambushed the members of the other units and killed them, and imprisoned the rest of them. After this incident, the front was dismantled where almost 70-80% of its members moved to Sudan in exile.

As the conflict between the liberation fronts in the country continued, the Arab League of Nations called on for a meeting to unite the fronts. To hinder the presence of EPLF in the meeting and isolate the front from the Arab Countries, the ELF leadership started to maneuver ploys against EPLF. Despite the hideous efforts of the ELF leadership, EPLF firmly asserted its stance on the issue of unity of the fronts and participated in the agreement.

The outcomes of October 20th Agreement
The EPLF stance on the issue of national unity is one and firm stance, and as a result it was doing its level best for the success of the October 20,1977 Agreement on the issue of the national unity. Although the intervention of Soviet Union and its partners were a challenge to the front, the main issue at that period of time is the cooperation and unity of all the fronts struggling for the liberation of the country.

Continuing its attacks, EPLF launched several acute attacks in western part of the country that were under the full control of the enemy forces. As part of these attacks, in July 5, 1985 EPLF launched an attack on the town of Barentu and defeated the huge force deployed in the town. 

The dismantlement of the ELF was a huge lose to the armed struggle, and was a great disappointment to many Eritreans and other sympathizers of the Eritrean people struggle for independence. The incident happening at the times where enemy forces were doing their level best to destroy the struggle for liberation makes the situation worse.

Despite the fact that the Derg regime was heavily defeated in the five invasions it launched, it still took a substantial amount of time to prepare itself with armaments and human resources for another big offensive, the sixth offensive, “Keyih Kokob”.  As part of this latter invasion, the regime deployed thousand of special trained soldiers with various sophisticated weaponry and armament. The invasion was different than the previous invasions because this time the regime was determined to end the Eritrean people struggle for liberation. A number of seminars and meetings were held all over the country including  in other parts of the world in a bid to persuade other parties that the invasion has the support of the Eritrean and Ethiopian people.