Faith Nyasuguta
Health workers have revealed that at least 26 civilians were killed in a drone strike in a town in Ethiopia’s Amhara region.
Federal government forces and a regional militia that fought on the same side during the recent war in the Tigray region have been fighting each other for the past four months.
The Sunday attack took place in the central town of Finote Selam, in the West Gojam Zone of Ethiopia’s Amhara region.
A doctor at Finote Selam Hospital who spoke on the condition of anonymity said injured people started arriving around midday.
“There are many people who died at the site of the accident, but we do not have the exact numbers of that,” he said. “But the ones who arrived here and passed away are around 26 people as of now.”
Amhara militia, dubbed Fano, fought alongside federal troops against Tigrayan forces during the two-year war that ended last November in the Tigray region.
Fighting between the two parties was sparked in April when the government ordered the militia to integrate with the country’s police or military following the peace deal in Tigray.
According to health workers in Finote Selam, essential supplies for saving lives, including oxygen tanks, have been running short due to roadblocks in the area.
The doctor said the hospital struggled to deal with the wounded from the drone strike.
“The hospital did not have the capacity to handle even the ones who came yesterday,” he said. “There were more than 100 injured people who came in at the beginning, and many more after that.”
The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, in a statement released Monday, said that it received credible reports of shelling in Finote Selam as well as two other locations in Amhara region — Burie and Debre Birhan.
The commission also noted that civilians were subject to beatings and killings in many areas of Bahir Dar, the capital city of Amhara region.
The Ethiopian government announced the arrest of 23 individuals in relation to what it called illegal activities last Friday, 10 days after declaring a state of emergency in Amhara.
Among those arrested were an opposition parliamentarian, Christian Tadele, and the editor-in-chief of the online news outlet Alpha Media, Bekalu Alamrew.
RELATED:
