Shortly afterwards, Radio Ethiopia broadcast a charge by Mengistu that Tafari and his associates had been killed because they were secret supporters of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party (EPRP).
A member of the faction opposed to Lieutenant Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, at a February 1977 meeting between Mengistu and his opponents, who included not only Asrat but chairman General Tafari Benti and a number of leading members of the Derg, gunfire erupted leaving both Asrat and General Tafari, as well as six other leaders of the Derg dead.
If it was not clear by this point to Mengistu that he was being squeezed out of power, after a mass rally in Revolution Square in Addis Ababa (better known by its older name, Meskel Square, which was later restored after Mengistu's fall), when General Tafari Benti gave a speech for reconciliation between the various revolutionary factions, he was flanked by Captains Almayahu Haile and Mogus.