After the July Addis Ababa debacles the railway to Djibouti operated unmolested for a while. The Italians only controlled a narrow corridor along the railway line, and slowly the rebels regrouped elsewhere in the following months. The Regia Aeronautica bombed suspected rebel camps as they were discovered, often using chemical munitions. On the 10th of October Ficrè Mariam reappeared attacking three irregular bands serving under the Italian flag. Two days later a major strike was attempted by one of his subordinates. The rebels targeted a special train transporting the Minister of the Colonial Empire Alessandro Lessona. Italian aviation helped check this attack and others. Eventually Viceroy Graziani mounted a complex operation directly against Ficrè Mariam's sanctuary around Mount Boccan.

Ficrè Mariam and his most important subalterns died together at the end of this engagement. Counted among those followers was a businessman from Addis Ababa who had helped him by providing the tools used to sabotage the railway line. The Eritreans burned villages and killed livestock to punish and disrupt popular support for the guerrillas, complying with Graziani’s methodology which he'd refined against Libyan rebels in the 1920s. The suppression campaign disorganized the Ethiopian resistance in the areas surrounding the railway, though small engagements still occurred. By the end of that year resistance began to subside.