The Critical Threats Project reports that Ethiopian federal forces have conducted airstrikes on Adigrat, Adwa, Axum and Shire since 3 October, describing them as strikes on population centres held by the TPLF.
For Adwa and Sheraro we hold rather more: named hotels, a named part of a displacement camp, eyewitnesses to two separate news organisations, and casualty figures that cluster. Those are recorded separately.
For Axum and Shire we hold almost nothing beyond the names. No building, no date more precise than "since 3 October", no casualty figure, no witness, no denial. Axum is a city of around seventy thousand people and a UNESCO world heritage site; Shire is a town that has held displacement camps since the last war. Both are places where a strike would matter a great deal and where the absence of detail is itself notable.
We are publishing this because the gap is the story. A list of four town names in an analytical digest is how an airstrike enters the record when nobody can reach the town, and Tigray has been under a communications blackout since late September. That is not a reason to assert more than we have.