In February 1973, a crowd of 1,500 peasants marched from Dessie to the capital to make the authorities notice the famine in Wollo. They were stopped by police on the outskirts of Addis Ababa and forced to return. Following the Ethiopian revolution, one of the few major encounters between rebels and government forces took place north-west of Dessie in October 1976. Instigated by the local landlord, a large group of peasants marched on the city; troops of the Derg fired into the crowd. Reports of the death toll vary widely, from several hundred to nearly a thousand. In October 1989 Dessie was almost captured by the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). The EPRDF took permanent control of the city on 18 May 1990, as part of Operation Wallelign.