Tigrayan People's Liberation Front
During the Italian occupation, a leprosarium was built in Selekh Lekha; this was abandoned by its Italian staff on 30 March 1941, and later pillaged and destroyed by the locals. The town was later the center of heavy fighting between the 604th Army Corps of the Derg's Third Revolutionary Army and troops of the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front during the Battle of Shire, which ended on 19 February 1989 with a crushing defeat for the Derg.