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Some 222 people were killed in an attack in Ethiopia, a Red Cross volunteer said.
Houses were set on fire in the massacre that took place on Wednesday in Bekoji, a village in the western Bulen region that borders Sudan, amid mounting ethnic tensions.
The death toll was originally estimated at more than 100 by the state-appointed Ethiopian Human Rights Commission.
Ethiopia has been dealing with outbreaks of deadly violence since 2018
But Melese Mesfin, a Red Cross volunteer, said on Friday the organization had buried the bodies of 207 victims and 15 attackers.
A Bulen County spokesperson confirmed that 207 people were killed and 40,000 more had fled their homes due to the fighting.
Reuters reported that the military was then dispatched before killing 42 gunmen accused of being behind the attack.
Africa’s second most populous nation has been grappling with outbreaks of deadly violence since Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed was appointed in 2018 and accelerated political reforms.
Next year’s elections that will not take place in Tigray have caused even more unrest
For almost three years until his appointment, the country was governed by a coalition of four ethnic movements dominated by a party from Tigray, a northern region.
That administration ruled in an increasingly autocratic fashion until Abiy came to power, when he rushed to carry out political and economic reforms, including the release of tens of thousands of political prisoners.
In 2019, Abiy merged three of the old ruling parties to form the Prosperity Party, and only the Tigray People’s Liberation Front refused to join.
Almost a million people in Tigray have fled to become refugees.
In Tigray, thousands of people are believed to have died and 950,000 have fled their homes since clashes broke out between regional forces and the federal government on 4 November.
Tigray held its own elections in September in defiance of the federal government, which declared the ballot box illegal.
Next year, Ethiopia will hold parliamentary elections on June 5, but not in Tigray, a new catalyst for unrest.
The electoral board said it would announce an election date there once electoral offices can be opened there.
