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Thursday, 24 December 2020 10:30

Ethiopia's PM says forces have been sent into Benishangul-Gumuz region

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Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said on Thursday he had deployed forces to the western
Benishangul-Gumuz region, a day after gunmen killed more than 100 people in the area, which
has seen regular ethnic violence.
On Wednesday, the state-run Ethiopian Human Rights Commission said gunmen had killed over
100 people in a dawn attack in the village of Bekoji in Bulen county in the Metekel zone, an area
where numerous ethnic groups live.
"The massacre of civilians in Benishangul-Gumuz region is very tragic," Abiy said on Twitter.
"The government, to solve the root causes of the problem, has deployed a necessary force."
Africa's second-most populous nation has been wrestling with outbreaks of deadly violence since
Abiy took office in 2018 and accelerated democratic and economic reforms that have loosened
the state's iron grip on regional rivalries.
Residents on Wednesday described to Reuters seeing dozens of dead bodies and being chased by
unknown gunmen shooting at locals.
Abiy and senior officials had visited the region on Tuesday to call for calm after multiple deadly
attacks in recent months, such as a Nov. 14 assault in which gunmen targeted a bus and killed 34
people.
In a separate part of the country, Ethiopia's military has been fighting rebels in the northern
Tigray region for more than six weeks in a conflict that has displaced close to 950,000 people.
The deployment of federal troops there has led to fears of a security vacuum in other restive
regions.
(Reuters, December 24, 2020 )
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