Houses set on fire: More than 100 dead in massacre in Ethiopia

Wednesday December 23, 2020

Houses set on fire
More than 100 dead in massacre in Ethiopia

Armed attackers have attacked villages in western Ethiopia. According to the human rights organization Amnesty International, people were stabbed and shot. Survivors report houses on fire. The number of deaths is to increase.

According to Amnesty International, more than 100 people were killed in a massacre in western Ethiopia. In the morning, armed members of the Amhara, Oromo and Shinasha communities attacked villages in the Benishangul-Gumuz region, the human rights organization said. People were stabbed and shot and houses were set on fire.

Amnesty said it spoke to five survivors of the attack by phone. There have been reports of at least 100 deaths so far, but the number is likely to increase. The Amhara Region's regional news agency, the Amhara Mass Media Agency, reported that eyewitnesses told of several dozen deaths and burned houses.

This brutal attack underscores the "urgent need for the Ethiopian government to act to stop violence against ethnic minorities," said Amnesty International's Netsanet Belay. Since September there has been several waves of violence against members of the Amhara, Shinasha, Oromo and Agew in this region.

Quite a few tensions between population groups

In the multi-ethnic state of Ethiopia with its around 112 million inhabitants, there is a lot of tension between population groups. They have increased under Abiy Ahmed, who has been in power since 2018. There is currently a conflict in the northern region of Tigray between the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), which was in power there, and the central government in Addis Ababa.

At the weekend, after weeks of fighting in the Ethiopian conflict region of Tigray, tensions with the neighboring state of Sudan over border problems had arisen. After around a month of fighting, almost 50,000 Ethiopians fled the Tigray region across the border with Sudan.