August 26 (Reuters) – Armed forces killed at least 150 people last week in western Ethiopia in an attack by an armed group on local residents, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission appointed on Thursday said. state.
The commission said residents in Gida Kiremu district, in the Oromiya region, east of Wollega, told investigators that the gunmen were from the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), which is detached from the previously banned Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) opposition.
Ethiopia has been embroiled in a conflict that spread nine months ago in the northern Tigray region and has spread to other areas. The government has also struggled to contain other outbreaks of ethnic and political violence on land and resources.
The OLA attacked residents on Aug. 18 “based on their ethnic identity,” the commission said in a statement, saying 150 people died in the incident.
The OLA denied that it had killed civilians in incidents as described by the commission, and said the Gida Kiremu incident involved clashes between OLA fighters and Amhara militias.
“When our forces arrived … it was these Amhara fighters who started fighting them,” the OLAA said in a statement.
The OLA says it fights for the rights of the Oromo people, the largest ethnic group in the Horn of Africa country. This year, there have often been deadly clashes between Oromo and Amhara, another major ethnic group. Read more
An Amhara resident told Reuters that the people of Amhara had tried to fight the OLA attackers. “As soon as they arrived they opened fire. We tried to defend ourselves and shoot again,” the resident said.
The commission said there were several attacks in the days following the August 18 incident and killed 60 people.
“We are still trying to assess the number of people who died, those who committed the attack and what exactly happened,” Zelalem Sori, a spokesman for the eastern government in Wollega, told Reuters.
Forces in Ethiopia’s rebel region, Tigray, said in August they were in talks to forge a military alliance with the OLA, accumulating pressure on the Ethiopian government. Read more
The U.S. government said Wednesday that war and the humanitarian crisis in northern Ethiopia could affect trade benefits under the U.S. Africa Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA). Read more
AGOA gives countries in sub-Saharan Africa tax-free access to the United States as long as they meet conditions such as removing barriers to U.S. trade and investment and advancing toward political pluralism. Ethiopia exported nearly $ 250 million worth of goods to the United States under AGOA in 2019, according to U.S. data.
All parties to the Ethiopian conflict have been accused of abuse.
Reports by Dawit Endeshaw and Ayenat Mersie; Additional reports by Joe Bavier; Edited by Giles Elgood and Mark Heinrich and Maggie Fick
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