Police shoot protesters at festival in Ethiopia

AT LEAST 52 people were killed in the Oromia region of Ethiopia after police fired on protesters chanting antigovernment slogans.

About two million people were attending the annual Irrecha thanksgiving festival in the town of Addis Ababa when the chanting began.

Witnesses said others in the crowd held their wrists crossed above their heads, a sign of resistance to the regime, while some threw rocks and bottles.

Police responded with tear gas and rubber bullets, and as the crowd scattered, several were crushed in ditches. Footage showed a helicopter hovering as shots rang out and a large crowd ran in different directions. “I almost died in that place today,” said one protester who gave his name as Elias. Mudcovered and shoeless, he said he had been dragged out of a deep ditch that many people fell into as they fled.

The first to fall in had suffocated, he said.

The government acknowledged that deaths had occurred but it did not say how many were killed and injured. A spokesman blamed “people that prepared to cause trouble”.

Mulatu Gemechu, an official from the opposition Oromo Federalist Congress, said that hospital sources estimated at least 52 people were dead.

The figure was expected to rise among those who had been injured.