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The EHRC said that the rebel group killed 150 people in the Oromia region last week and another 60 people were killed in retaliatory attacks.
The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said that last week, more than 210 people were killed in ethnic violence that took place in the tense Oromia region of Ethiopia for several days.
The state-attached but independent committee said on Thursday that witnesses described gunmen belonging to the rebel group Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) who arrived on August 18 after security forces withdrew from Gida-Kirimu in the western region.
“Residents and others in the area told the committee that more than 150 people were killed by gunmen,” the human rights agency said.
The attack forced women and children to flee to neighboring areas and triggered a wave of retaliatory killings.
The committee stated that “in the following days, some residents carried out retaliatory attacks based on ethnicity, resulting in more than 60 deaths” and triggered more civilians to flee the violence.
The government-appointed agency did not specify who is responsible for the retaliation.
The statement said: “The attack occurred on the second day after the security forces moved to other areas.”
Local reports and sources said that the initial target of the attack was Amharic people who had often faced similar attacks in the past.
The team called for “immediate action” to prevent the instability from spreading further, and to investigate why the security forces withdrew from the troubled area.
In a statement, OLA denied responsibility for the attack. The organization is believed to be active in the area where the most recent attack occurred.
The spokesperson of the rebel group, Odaa Tarbii, said in a tweet on Thursday that such reports are “serious distortions of local facts.”
OLA was designated by legislators as a “terrorist organization” in May along with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which has been fighting in northern Ethiopia since November.
The government accused OLA of massacring civilians in Oromia, the country’s largest region, and Amhara, the country’s second largest region.
Federal officials said that the conflict between the two ethnic groups caused more than 300 deaths in a few days in March.
The organization denies allegations of leading the horrific massacre.
It is believed that only a few thousand people, OLA left the Oromo Liberation Front, an opposition party that had been in exile for many years, but was allowed to return to Ethiopia after Prime Minister Abi Ahmed took office in 2018.
Earlier this month, OLA and TPLF announced that they had reached an agreement to jointly fight Abiy’s forces and their allies.
An OLA spokesperson stated that the two groups have agreed that Abi’s “dictatorship” must be abolished, and that they are sharing intelligence and coordinating strategies.
The government condemned the agreement as a “destructive alliance” between two groups trying to destabilize the country.
Since the Nobel Peace Prize winner Abi sent troops into Tigray in November to overthrow the TPLF, northern Ethiopia has been suffering from conflict.
He said the move was in response to the TPLF’s attack on the federal barracks, and victory will come soon.
But nine months later, the conflict has spread to the neighbouring Afar and Amhara regions and has attracted troops from all over Ethiopia.
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