ADDIS ABABA, June 27 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Dozens of people were killed in fighting during a foiled coup by a rogue state militia in Ethiopia’s Amhara region at the weekend, the regional government spokesman said, the first official report of significant clashes.
The militia attacked the police headquarters, ruling party headquarters and president’s office — where they executed three top officials — in Amhara’s regional capital of Bahir Dar on Saturday, Asemahagh Aseres said on the sidelines of a state burial for the officials who were killed.
The militia was a recently formed unit of the region’s security services. It had appealed for others to join its take-over but were rebuffed, Asemahagh said.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has rolled out a package of economic and political reforms since taking office in April last year.
He has lifted a ban on political parties, released journalists, rebels and prisoners, and prosecuted officials accused of abuses. But his shake-up of the military and intelligence services has earned him powerful enemies.
His government is also struggling to contain discontent from Ethiopia’s myriad ethnic groups fighting the federal government and each other for greater influence and resources. Outbreaks of ethnic violence have displaced around 2.4 million people, according to the United Nations.
Regional state-run media has reported 13 deaths in the violence so far.
Details of more deaths in a separate but possibly linked attack in a neighboring state also emerged on Wednesday.
Men in camouflage uniforms killed more than 50 people and injured 23 others in the Metakal zone of the Benishangul-Gumuz region early on Monday, the region’s peace and security bureau head Abera Bayeta said.
“We are still investigating but we have our suspicion that those attackers might be the same people who were involved in the coup in Amhara region,” he said.
The government has accused Amhara’s former security chief of masterminding the twin attacks that killed the region’s president Ambachew Mekonnen and two other officials in Bahir Dar, and the chief of staff and another general 325 kilometers away in the national capital Addis Ababa the same night.
Alleged coup mastermind Asamnew Tsige, who was shot dead by security forces on Monday, was accused of trying to seize control of Amhara, not the whole country.
Thousands lined the streets in Ethiopia’s two main northern cities on Wednesday in mourning.
In Bahir Dar, capital of Amhara, priests from Ethiopia’s Orthodox church gave sermons calling for forgiveness as the bodies of officials were laid out at the presidential house.
Three flower-covered black hearses carrying the state president, his adviser and the state’s attorney general wound their way through the streets accompanied by traditional flute music before being buried with military salutes.
Snipers stood on roofs and federal and regional security services mixed with the crowds in a show of strength. The prime minister’s wife, deputy and foreign minister, all of whom are from Amhara, attended the ceremony.
“I call for law and order to be restored,” Deputy Prime Minister Demeke Mekonnen told the crowd. “We should all reserve our emotions and respect the law.”
In the neighboring region of Tigray, thousands gathered in the capital Mekelle. Tigray was the home of the national army’s chief of staff, Seare Mekonnen, who was shot dead in Addis Ababa alongside another general from the region by his bodyguard late on Saturday.
“We will not be divided by ethnicities. We will be united,” said General Asrat Denero, the chief of the Ethiopian military’s western command center. — NNN-AGENCIES
