The 34-year-old man’s songs focused on the rights of his Oromo people.
Seven people died in Ethiopia in protests that followed the shooting death of musician Hachalu Hundessa, known for his political songs, doctors told the BBC.
Police are investigating his death.
Hachalu’s songs often focused on the rights of the country’s Oromo ethnic group and became hymns in a wave of protests that led to the fall of the former prime minister in 2018.
The 34-year-old man was attacked on Monday night while driving.
The singer had said he had received death threats, but it is unclear who was behind his shooting outside the capital Addis Ababa.
Thousands of his fans headed to the city hospital where the singer’s body was taken on Monday night.
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Crowds of people came to mourn the singer in Addis Ababa
To them, he was a voice of their generation protesting decades of government repression.
‘More than an artist’
By Bekele Atoma, BBC Afaan Oromo
Hachalu was more than just a singer and artist.
It was a symbol for the Oromo people who spoke about the political and economic marginalization they had suffered under consecutive Ethiopian regimes.
In one of his most famous songs, he sang: “Don’t wait for help from abroad, a dream that does not come true. Get up, get your horse ready and fight, you are the one near the palace.”
The musician had also been jailed for five years when he was 17 for participating in protests.
Many like him fled into exile for fear of persecution, but he remained in the country and encouraged the youth to fight.
Downed royal statue
In Addis Ababa, police used tear gas to disperse the crowd outside the hospital, and gunshots were heard in the city where people set tires on fire.
In Adama, 56 miles (90 km) southeast of Addis Ababa, five people died after being shot during the protests and another 75 were injured, the hospital’s executive director, Dr. Mekonnin Feyisa, told BBC Afaan Aromo.
Nineteen others were injured in the nearby city of Dera, he added.
Meanwhile, in the eastern city of Chiro, two people were shot dead during the protests, a doctor at the local hospital told the BBC.
The internet has also closed in some parts of the country as protests spread in the regional state of Oromia.
Hachalu’s body was being taken to his hometown of Ambo, about 100 kilometers west of the capital, but protesters tried to stop him and insisted that he be buried in Addis Ababa.
In the eastern city of Harar, protesters tore down a statue of a royal prince, Ras Makonnen Wolde Mikael, who was the father of Haile Selassie, the last emperor of Ethiopia.
The statue shows Ras Makonnen, a leading military figure and former governor of Harar province in the 19th century under then-Emperor Menelik II, sitting on a horse.
In a recent interview with the local television station Oromia Media Network, Hachalu had said that people should remember that all the horses seen ridden by old leaders belonged to the people.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed expressed his condolences by saying in a tweet that Ethiopia “lost a precious life today” and described the singer as “wonderful”.
The musician’s death and protests occur as political tensions mount after the indefinite postponement of the elections scheduled for August due to the coronavirus pandemic.
They would have been the first electoral test for Abiy after he came to power in April 2018.
What were the Oromo protests about?
The Oromo, Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group, have long complained of being marginalized.
Demonstrations erupted in 2016 and pressure mounted on the government.
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In 2016 and 2017 there was a wave of demonstrations in defiance of the government.
The ruling coalition eventually replaced then-prime minister Hailemariam Desalegn with Abiy, who is Oromo himself.
It has introduced a series of reforms that have transformed what was considered a very oppressive state.
He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 primarily for making peace with his former enemy Eritrea, but his efforts to transform Ethiopia were also recognized.
