Several people, including women and children, were killed in ethnic violence in Kamashi woreda of the Benshangul Gumuz region, the western part of the country on Friday and Thursday, according to multiple reports. Exact numbers of those killed and injured are hard to establish. Yilkal Getnet of the Blue party oppostion party said that between 30-40 Amhara people have been massacred in the violence, in which the region’s security forces were involved, citing people on the spot that he managed to talk over the phone. Yilkal said that more than 200 houses were burned and a three year-old girl and a four-year-old girl who are among the injured, who are now in a local clinic, he said. However, the regions communication head Mengistu Tesso told the Amharic Reporter that only three people died and eight wounded people were admitted to Nekemte hospital. Nine houses were burned, according to the communication head. The killings started with a personal feud between two persons and it was not ethnically motivated, Mengistu said.
Muluken Tesfaw, the Oslo-based activist, who published the story this first said that the Amhara living in the region have increasingly been targeted for looting and attack, which provoked the latest incident. The village had been attacked by men who came from village, by the order of the woreda’s administrator, Mitiku Nono. Troops have now been deployed in the area but have not been able to contain it, according to Yilkal.
Benishangul–Gumuz region, one of nine regional states of the Ethiopian federation, is home to the ethnic groups that the Berta (25.41%), Amhara (21.69%), Gumuz (20.88%), Oromo (13.55%), Shinasha (7.73%) and Agaw-Awi (4.22). Sporadic conflict erupts from time to time between the various population groups, indigenous Berta, Gumuz and descendants of later immigrant groups like the Oromo, the Amhara.
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