By Chris Muhizi for MCN.
At least 26 people were murdered in an airstrike on a bustling town square in Ethiopia’s Amhara region, the most recent act of violence in the country’s second-largest state, where militias have been fighting the army.
According to a local physician who spoke to the Guardian, the incident took place early on Sunday morning in Finote Selam, a town in Amhara’s West Gojjam zone.
One of the deadliest single incidents since unrest broke out in Amhara in early August, hospital officials told the Guardian that 26 people had died and at least 50 others had been injured.
Uncertainty surrounds the percentage of civilian fatalities. Residents claimed that the attack was directed at ethnic Fano militiamen who had gathered in the town center, but they also noted that a number of onlookers were also injured.
When the government revealed a plan to incorporate regional forces into the military in April, the partnership between Amhara forces and federal troops that they had been fighting alongside to take control of numerous contested territories in the Tigray conflict came to an end.
The Amhara, who make up Ethiopia’s second-largest ethnic group, claim that the peace accord that put an end to the violence did not take their concerns into account. They worry that Tigray may reclaim their recently acquired, hard-won lands.
The local chapter leader of the ruling Prosperity party was fatally murdered by unidentified gunmen who are thought to have been members of the Fano militia in late April. The government declared in June that it had killed 200 “extremists” in a shootout at a secluded monastery. Activists claim that clerics were among the victims.
Just nine months after a truce ended a deadly two-year conflict in the neighboring Tigray area, Fano militia have taken control of many towns across Amhara, sparking concerns of a new war in northern Ethiopia.