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FILE PHOTO: Ethiopian Prime Minister, Nobel Peace Prize winner, Abiy Ahmed Ali, delivers his speech during the awards ceremony at Oslo City Hall, Norway, on December 10, 2019. NTB Scanpix / Stian Lysberg Solum via REUTERS reuters_tickers
This content was published on Dec 24, 2020 – 08:28
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said on Thursday that he had deployed forces to the western Benishangul-Gumuz region, a day after gunmen killed more than 100 people in the area, which has suffered ethnic violence on a regular basis.
On Wednesday, the state-run Ethiopian Human Rights Commission said gunmen had killed more than 100 people in an attack at dawn in the village of Bekoji in Bulen County in the Metekel area, an area where numerous ethnic groups live.
“The massacre of civilians in the Benishangul-Gumuz region is very tragic,” Abiy said on Twitter. “The government, to solve the root causes of the problem, has deployed a necessary force.”
Africa’s second most populous nation has been battling outbreaks of deadly violence since Abiy took office in 2018 and accelerated democratic and economic reforms that have loosened the state’s iron grip on regional rivalries.
Residents described to Reuters on Wednesday that they saw dozens of bodies and were chased by unknown men who were shooting at locals.
Abiy and senior officials visited the region on Tuesday to call for calm after multiple deadly attacks in recent months, including the Nov. 14 assault in which gunmen attacked a bus and killed 34 people.
In a separate part of the country, the Ethiopian army has been fighting rebels in the northern region of Tigray for more than six weeks in a conflict that has displaced about 950,000 people. The deployment of federal troops there has sparked fears of a security vacuum in other troubled regions.
(Report from the Addis Ababa newsroom; written by Omar Mohammed; edited by Hugh Lawson)
