ADDIS ABABA: According to health professionals, a drone strike in a town in Ethiopia’s Amhara region resulted in the deaths of at least 26 civilians. Voice of America (VOA) claimed that for the past four months, there has been fighting between federal government forces and a local militia that participated in the same side of the current conflict in the Tigray region.
The attack happened on Sunday in the Amhara region of Ethiopia’s West Gojam Zone’s centre town of Finote Selam.
A doctor at Finote Selam Hospital who spoke on the condition of anonymity said injured people started arriving around midday, VOA reported.
“There are many people who died at the site of the accident, but we do not have the exact numbers of that,” the doctor said. “But the ones who arrived here and passed away are around 26 people as of now,” he added.
Amhara militia known as Fano fought alongside federal troops against Tigrayan forces during the two-year war that ended last November in the Tigray region.
Fighting between the federal government and Fano 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, VOA reported.
Essential supplies for saving lives, including oxygen tanks, have been running short due to roadblocks in the area, according to health workers in Finote Selam.
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,” he added.
The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, in a statement released on Monday, said that it received credible reports of shelling in Finote Selam as well as two other locations in the Amhara region, Burie and Debre Birhan, VOA reported.
The commission also said that civilians were subject to beatings and killings in many areas of Bahir Dar, the capital city of the 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, VOA reported.
Among those arrested were an opposition parliamentarian, Christian Tadele, and the editor-in-chief of the online news outlet Alpha Media, Bekalu Alamrew. (ANI)