At least 73 people have been killed, 45 wounded and tens of thousands displaced in clashes so far this year between Ethiopia’s rival Oromo and Somali ethnic groups, according to a local human rights watchdog.
The Ethiopian Human Rights Council (Ehrco) said the fighting over four months between March and June in the country’s southern Oromia and southeastern Somali states had been sparked by long-running disputes over land and cattle.
”The clashes that have taken place [have left] 73 people killed and 45 wounded while displacing more than 80 000 people,” it said in a six-page report on the ethnic unrest released late on Tuesday.
Ehrco said the fighting was concentrated in East and West Harregie, which straddle the two states 550km east of Addis Ababa in March, late April and late June and around Borena, 700km south of the capital, in Oromia state in May.
In the deadliest single incident in March, 14 people were killed, 10 wounded and 1 600 forced from their homes when a group of rustlers attacked a cattle herder in the locality of Kurkul in East Herregie, it said.
Ehrco’s report is the first to attempt to compile overall casualty figures for the violence although state-run media has in the past reported individual incidents without providing tolls of the dead and wounded. ‒ Sapa-AFP