80 killed in attack in Ethiopian border region with Sudan

NAIROBI: More than 80 civilians were killed in an attack on Tuesday in the BenishangulGumuz region on Ethiopia’s border with Sudan, the stateappointed Ethiopian Human Rights Commission said on Wednesday.

“We have received information that over 80 civilians have been killed in yet another massacre’’, Aaron Maasho, a senior adviser at the commission, said on Wednesday.

He did not say who might have carried out the attack. More than 220 people were killed in an attack last month in the Benishangul-gumuz region, which borders Sudan. As in last month’s attack, Tuesday’s violence occurred in the Metekel zone of the region.

The region is home to several ethnic groups. In recent years, people from the neighbouring Amhara region have started moving into the area, prompting some ethnic Gumuz to complain that fertile land is being taken away, experts say.

Worke Ahmed, 60, told Reuters by telephone that the men involved in Tuesday’s attack were armed and that he saw more than 100 of them. Some wore uniforms that he could not identify, he said.

“They burnt my house and my brother’s house, with 200 cattle and 11 goats inside’’, he said.

Ethiopia, for its part, said in mid-december that Sudanese military forces had “organised attacks... using heavy machine guns”.

On Tuesday, Addis Ababa claimed that Sudanese forces were pushing further into the border region and warned that while it “gives priority to peace”, it has “its limit”.

Khartoum on Tuesday accused Ethiopian armed men of killing six people including five women and a child on Monday in the area, calling it a “brutal aggression.”