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Ethiopia deploys forces to ethnic region after deadly violence

Thursday, 24 December 2020 11:01 AM [ Last Update: Thursday, 24 December 2020 11:06 AM ]

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed addresses the media in Lamu County, Kenya, on December 9, 2020. (Photo by Reuters)

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has ordered the deployment of military forces to the country’s volatile west, after armed attackers killed scores of people along ethnic border lines in the region.

“The massacre of civilians in Benishangul-Gumuz region is very tragic,” Abiy said in a Twitter post on Thursday. “The government, to solve the root causes of the problem, has deployed a necessary force.”

The state-run Ethiopian Human Rights Commission announced a day earlier that gunmen had killed over 100 people in a dawn attack on a village in Bulen County in the western Benishangul-Gumuz region, an area where numerous ethnic groups live.

Amnesty International, which spoke with five survivors, said members of the ethnic Gumuz community had attacked the homes of ethnic groups of Amhara, Oromo, and Shinasha, setting them on fire and stabbing and shooting residents.

The rights group said that the Gumuz see minorities as “settlers” and that dozens of people were still unaccounted for.

Over 100 killed in latest ethnic massacre in Ethiopia

More than 100 people have been killed in the latest massacre along ethnic lines in western Ethiopia, and the toll is expected to rise, according to the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission.

Abiy and senior officials had visited the region earlier in the week to call for calm after multiple deadly attacks in recent months, including a November 14 assault in which gunmen targeted a bus and killed 34 people.

The attacks are separate from the deadly conflict in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, where Ethiopian forces and allied regional forces began fighting Tigray regional forces in early November.

Ethiopia conflict 'spiraling out of control,' UN rights chief warns

The UN rights chief voiced deep concern Wednesday over the situation in Ethiopia

The United Nations (UN) and aid agencies have been pressing for safe access to Tigray, which is home to more than 5 million people and where 600,000 were dependent on food aid even before the conflict began last month.

Thousands are feared dead and the UN estimates that more than 950,000 people have been displaced by the conflict, nearly 50,000 of them into neighboring Sudan.

The Ethiopian government has not commented on the UN estimate.

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