The attack took place in the village of Bekoji, in Bulen County, in the Metekel area, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission said in a statement, an area where several ethnic groups live.
Africa’s second most populous nation has been confronted with regular outbreaks of deadly violence since Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed was appointed in 2018 and accelerated democratic reforms that loosened the state’s firm grip on regional rivalries.
The elections to be held next year have further aggravated the slow-fire tensions over land, power and resources.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said on Thursday that he had deployed forces in the western Benishangul-Gumuz region.
“The massacre of civilians in the Benishangul-Gumuz region is very tragic,” Abiy said on Twitter. “The government, in order to solve the root causes of the problem, has deployed the necessary force.
In an independent part of the country, the Ethiopian army has been fighting rebels in the northern Tigray region for more than six weeks in a conflict that has displaced nearly 950,000 people. The deployment of federal troops there has raised fears of a security vacuum in other quiet regions.
Ethiopia is also fighting an insurgency in the Oromiya region and faces long-standing security threats from Somali Islamist militants along its porous eastern border.
Gashu Dugaz, a senior regional security official, said authorities were aware of the Benishangul-Gumuz attack and were verifying the identities of the attackers and victims, but gave no further information.
The region is home to several ethnic groups, including the Gumuz. But in recent years, farmers and businessmen in the neighboring Amhara region have begun to settle in the area, prompting some Gumuz to complain about the taking of fertile land.
Some Amhara leaders say some of the lands in the region, especially in the Metekel area, rightly belong to them, claims that have angered the people of Gumuz.
“In the previous attacks it was the people who came from the forest who were involved, but in this case, the victims said they knew the people involved in the attack,” the rights commission said in a statement.
Belay Wajera, a farmer in the western town of Bulen, told Reuters he counted 82 dead bodies in a field near his home after Wednesday’s raid. He and his family woke up to the sound of gunfire and ran out of his house as the men shouted “catch them,” he said. His wife and five of his children were shot dead, shot in the buttocks while four other children escaped and are now missing, Wajera told Reuters by telephone on Wednesday afternoon.
Another city resident, Hassen Yimama, said gunmen stormed the area around 6 a.m. local time. He told Reuters he counted 20 bodies in a different location. He grabbed his own weapon but the assailants shot him in the stomach.
A local doctor said he and his colleagues treated 38 injured people, most of them suffering gunshot wounds. Patients told him about relatives who died with knives and told him gunmen set fire to houses and shot at people trying to escape, he said.
“We were not prepared for this and we ran out of medication,” a nurse from the same facility told Reuters, adding that a five-year-old boy died while being taken to the clinic.
The attack came a day after Abiy, the chief of staff and other senior federal officials visited the region to urge calm after several deadly incidents in recent months, such as a November 14 assault in which men gunmen aimed a bus and killed 34 people.
“The desire of the enemies to divide Ethiopia into ethnic and religious lines still exists. This desire will remain unfulfilled,” Abiy tweeted on Tuesday along with photos of his meetings that day in the town of Metekel, near ‘where the November 14 attack took place.
He said residents’ desire for peace “exceeds any divisive agenda.”
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said on Thursday that he had deployed forces in the western Benishangul-Gumuz region, a day after gunmen killed more than 100 people in the area, which has suffered regular ethnic violence.
On Wednesday, the state-led Ethiopian Commission on Human Rights said gunmen had killed more than 100 people in a dawn attack in the village of Bekoji, Bulen County, in the Metekel area. , an area where many ethnic groups live.
“The massacre of civilians in the Benishangul-Gumuz region is very tragic,” Abiy said on Twitter. “The government, in order to solve the root causes of the problem, has deployed the necessary force.