Ten French tourists were kidnapped in the remote desert of northern Ethiopia, a businessman and a tour operator said on Friday. The tourists were in a convoy of four vehicles in Dalol, 800km north-east of Addis Ababa, travelling to salt mines in the Afar region on Thursday, when they were kidnapped.
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/ 22 November 2006
Rare Abyssinian lion cubs are being poisoned at a zoo in Ethiopia because staff cannot afford to keep them, a wildlife official said on Wednesday. The dead cubs are sold to taxidermists for each to be stuffed and sold as ornaments, said Muhedin Abdulaziz, the administrator at the Lion Zoo in the capital, Addis Ababa.
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/ 8 September 2006
Ethiopia said it has arrested nine members of a rebel hit squad that was planning to assassinate government leaders, state media reported on Friday. The suspects were working for the rebel Oromo Liberation Front, which has been fighting for greater autonomy in southern Ethiopia, the National Intelligence and Security Service said.
Members of a group listed by the United States as a terrorist band are now running the capital of neighbouring Somalia, days after Islamic fighters wrested control of the city from warlords, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said on Tuesday. ”The renowned extremist and terrorist organisation, al-Ittihad, is at the helm of the current leadership in Mogadishu,” Meles told lawmakers.
Amere Arega walked gingerly across the cracked earth along the tense border between Ethiopia and Eritrea, searching for unexploded landmines — a legacy of conflicts that have ravaged the Horn of Africa for the past 70 years. Amere is part of an increased effort by donor agencies, the European Union and others to de-mine the area.
A rebel group issued a warning on Monday to companies that are looking to develop natural gas fields in a contested area of Ethiopia, saying any investment that benefits the Ethiopian government ”will not be tolerated”. The Ogaden National Liberation Front, which wants an independent state in Ethiopia for ethnic Somalis, said a pipeline ”in what is essentially a combat zone is far from reality”.
The possible role of outsiders in Chad’s war has come under the spotlight, with the United States expressing concern over reports Sudan was backing the rebels, and the rebels saying they would have toppled President Idriss Déby by now if it was not for the French.
Chad’s President Idriss Déby, heeding international calls to protect refugees from Sudan’s volatile Darfur region, has backed off a threat to expel them, despite blaming Khartoum for last week’s deadly rebel attack on the capital, a United Nations official said.