At least 320 people were killed Monday in an ethnically motivated massacre in the west of the country, in the Oromia region, according to Ethiopian authorities and several witnesses. According to a survivor, the attackers shot at ethnic Amhara residents, including several women and children, in Kelem Welega province, some 400 km west of the capital Addis Ababa, between 0500 and 0900 local time.
The Ethiopian Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, accused the rebels of the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), which has been fighting the federal government in Oromia since 2018 and is listed as a “terrorist organization” by the Ethiopian authorities, of having perpetrated what he called of “massacre”. The attack took place, according to Abiy, when the rebels were fleeing after being “crushed by the security forces”. “We will pursue this terrorist group to the end and we will eradicate it,” he promised.
The OLA spokesman, Odaa Tarbii, rejected the accusations and pointed to paramilitary groups allied to the Government as responsible for the massacre. He also noted that federal troops recently deployed to the area did nothing to stop her. “The prime minister’s accusation is an attempt by the regime to deflect from the fact that he is fighting to maintain order in his own forces,” Odaa told Reuters.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, has asked the Ethiopian authorities for an “impartial and exhaustive” investigation.
Amhara Media Corporation, the government media of the Amhara region, broadcast the anonymous testimony of a survivor of the massacre, locating him in village 20. “No one came to our aid” during the massacre that “lasted for several hours,” he said.
The assailants have left and “the bodies are currently being collected, so far about 300 have been removed, but this is only the beginning, there are still many people who have not been located,” added the witness who was interviewed yesterday.
The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC), a public but legally independent institution, denounced on Monday night “the incessant insecurity in the area and what amounts to an ethnically motivated murder”. EHRC chief Daniel Bekele called in a statement for an “urgent reinforcement of government forces to prevent further civilian deaths.”
According to the EHRC, government security forces appear to have arrived in the area, but residents continue to flee seeking refuge elsewhere. Along the same lines, Human Rights Watch (HRW) denounced on Monday morning a “persistent cycle of violence” by both the security forces and the rebels against civilians in Oromia, “trapped” by a “violent government campaign of against insurrection” against the OLA.
The conflict in northern Ethiopia, which since November 2020 has pitted the government against the rebels in the Tigray region, overshadows this violence in Oromia, where “widespread impunity reigns,” according to HRW. On June 18, an episode similar to yesterday took place when armed men massacred hundreds of civilians, mostly Amhara, in the village of Tole, located in the neighboring area of ??West Wollega, also in Oromia.
