ADDIS ABABA, Nov 17 (NNN-XINHUA) — The governmental Ethiopia Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said up to 34 people are believed to have been killed in a recent armed attack.
In a press statement, EHRC said an armed attack in Ethiopia’s western Benishangul-Gumuz regional state on Saturday left 34 people dead.
EHRC said a passenger bus in Benishangul-Gumuz region was ambushed by armed attackers.
The statement did not disclose the identity of the attackers and the possible motives for the attack.
Ethnic violence among members of various ethnic groups in Benishangul-Gumuz regional state in recent months has left hundreds dead and thousands of others displaced.
The clashes are mainly over access to power and land resources.
Meanwhile, rockets from Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region hit the capital of neighbouring Eritrea on Saturday, diplomats said, the latest indication that Ethiopia’s internal conflict is spreading beyond its borders.
“The reports we’re getting indicate that several of the rockets hit near the airport” in the Eritrean capital Asmara, one diplomat said.
The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) accuses the Ethiopian federal government of enlisting military support from Eritrea, something Ethiopia denies.
Earlier Saturday, Getachew Reda, a senior TPLF member, threatened retaliatory “missile attacks” on Asmara and the Eritrean port city of Massawa.
It was not immediately clear how many rockets were fired, where in Tigray they were fired from, whether they hit their targets or what damage they inflicted.
Radio Erena, a Paris-based diaspora station sympathetic to the Eritrean opposition, cited Asmara residents who reported “four explosions in total”.
The TPLF dominated Ethiopian politics for nearly three decades and in that time fought a brutal 1998-2000 border war with Eritrea that left tens of thousands dead.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed came to power in 2018 and won the Nobel prize the following year in large part for his effort to initiate a rapprochement with Eritrea. — NNN-AGENCIES
