Widespread violence in the past week in the Arsi zone of the Oromia region following the shooting death of a popular Oromo singer has claimed more than 30 persons, officials told VOA on Monday.
People in the area told VOA that unidentified attackers targeted people not of Oromos ethnicity, although some ethnic Oromos and mixed ethnicities were also attacked. While some of the attacks were carried out by mobs, others were committed by well-coordinated and highly trained gunmen, the survivors told VOA. The attackers also burned and stoned some victims, they said. Eyewitnesses told VOA that businesses and private homes had been looted and burned, and historical sites destroyed. About 20 victims in Dherra town, Dodota woreda of Arsi Zone, about 115 kilometers east of Addis Ababa, told VOA they witnessed family members being killed, and their properties burned. “A huge mob came directly into our compound and went on the rampage at 9.00 in the morning. Without any provocation from our side, they set our house on fire,” one father who survived told VOA.”My 28-year-old son, Mersha Dereje, who came to visit me the day before succeeded in crawling into the neighborhood’s house where he stayed in hiding. But they pulled him from there and they executed him in front of the crowd,” he said, speaking through tears. The father said he has never been involved in politics, had only been farming the best years of life and he managed to raise his children alone after the death of his wife. His son was a good student, became an engineer after attending university, the father related. Merid Anagaw, who narrowly escaped death, said the mob came to his house early morning on Tuesday, they started hitting the doors, shouting, ‘You Amhara out’. “My father escaped by jumping over the fence. But they caught him and killed him in utterly inhuman ways, brought his body pulling,” he told the interviewer. He himself was wounded and he is being treated at a hospital, Merd, who is a 10th-grade student, said. The role of police in quelling the riots has been questionable, with several residents reporting that police refused to respond to requests of help or watched helplessly as their houses were torched and property looted. Merid told VOA that police officers told him they were not ordered to intervene when he called to inform them that people were being killed.
The victims and eyewitnesses sought shelter in a church in Dherra. Arsi Zone administrator Jemal Aleyu told VOA that 36 people, including two law enforcement officials, were killed in his region. The killings “should never happen again in a community that lived together for years, and people responsible for the killings and the destruction were under police custody awaiting due process,” Aleyu said.
