Getachew Reda, a senior official of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) on Wednesday reinforced his support for the cause of Kimant people for self-administration after rejecting claims by the Amhara region officials that TPLF orchestrated violence this week. “The Kimant identity issue should be given a political solution, the regional and the federal government should act to solve it as such, Getachew told VOA Amharic. “The question was long raised by the Kimant people. It has been said over and over again that the issue needs a response. Any sane person should consider this,” he said. TPLF has a moral obligation to support the cause of Kimant people for self-administration, Getachew added.

The Amhara region Police Commissioner Abera Adamu pointed fingers at TPLF for arming militias that have attacked villages in North Gondar this week. Dozens of people including policemen have been killed and several others wounded in an attack in Chilga town by groups armed with heavy artilleries and snipers and claiming to represent the Kimant identity question, the Police Commissioner said. Among the victims were six bus passengers from the Amhara ethnic group who were killed after singled out from the rest of the passengers, it was said.

“Any claim that TPLF had anything to do with the violence is inaccurate,” Getachew said. “Even the police commissioner knows that,” he added. “But when the Amhara security forces are pushed back after attempting to attack women and children, they always come up with such an excuse,” Getachew declared.

The US Embassy in Ethiopia on Wednesday warned American citizens to avoid the city of Gondar and its surrounding areas in the Amhara Region, citing reports of gunfire, roadblocks and the destruction of property.

The Kimant are a small ethnic group, roughly around 200,000, who most of them speak Amharic language. They live along an axis stretching from Ayikel in Chilga woreda to Kirkar north to Lake Tana in the woredas of Lay Armachohi, Qwara, Dembiya, Metemma, and Wogera. Though they complain of discrimination on the grounds of religious practices in the past, they have similar cultural and linguistic affinity with the Amhara.

The TPLF that has dominated the Ethiopian political scene for the past 27 years is often accused of using the fluid identity questions of Kimant and Agew against the Amhara region as aninstrument for proxy war.