The name of Dire Dawa means were the "Dir Hit" Meeshii Dir Dhabah in reference to 14th century battles between the Sultanate of Ifat and Oromo people. In the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935/36, Issa fought on the Italian side, in return benefited from weapons and military training and lucrative marketing opportunities for their cattle. In the second half of the twentieth century, Somalia supplied additional weapons to the Issa, which it upgraded as part of the West Somalia Liberation Front. All this contributed to the fact that the Issa repressed the Afar from the area of today's Shinile zone. The Aysha massacre was a massacre of ethnic Issa Somalis by Ethiopian army on 13 August 1960 in Aysha, Ethiopia. The Ethiopian troops had descended on the area to reportedly help defuse clan-related conflict. However, according to eye-witness testimony, that Somali men were then taken to a different location and then executed by Ethiopian soldiers. Among the latter, those who fled to Dikhil and Ali Sabieh in Djibouti. The drought and hunger crisis of 1972-1973/74 intensified the conflicts. The Ethiopian army intervened against the Issa and in 1971/72 killed hundreds and seized nearly 200,000 cattle. After the defeat of the Western Somali Liberation Front, the Issa Division remained under the name Issa and Gurgura Liberation Front. They continued to receive support from Somalia and joined the EPRDF. In 1987 the autonomous region of Dire Dawa was created for the Issa (which had previously belonged to the province of Xararge) as part of a new administrative division of Ethiopia. Since the EPRDF took over in 1991, the Issa areas in Ethiopia were part of the ethnic definition of the Somali Region.