Armed group kills 32, burns homes

ADDIS ABABA: Gunmen have killed 32 people and torched more than 20 houses in a raid in western Ethiopia.

The killings were carried out on Monday by an armed group called OLF Shane in the Western Wollega Zone of the Oromiya region, administrator Elias Umeta said.

‘‘We buried today 32 of them. About 700 to 750 people were also displaced from the area,’’ he said.

OLF Shane split from the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), an opposition party that spent years in exile but was allowed to return to Ethiopia after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took office in 2018. Sporadic violence has rocked Ethiopia since then.

OLF Shane says it is fighting for the right of the Oromos, the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia. But there was no known motive for the killings, Elias said.

The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission said the attack had targeted people from the ethnic Amharic group, who were dragged from their homes, taken to a school and killed.