Christians mow down Muslims in cemetery

More than 20 people have been killed in an attack on Muslims during the funeral of an elder in the northern Ethiopian city of Gondar, a local Islamic group said yesterday.

The Islamic Affairs Council of Amhara, the region where Gondar is located, described the attack in a cemetery as a “massacre” by heavily armed “extremist Christians”.

The attackers “fired a barrage of heavy machine guns and grenades ... leaving many dead, while others who were injured have been taken to hospital,” the religious body said.

“More than 20 have died due to yesterday’s attack, which also saw the looting of Muslim properties,” it added.

The mayor of Gondar, Zewdu Malede, told Ethiopian public broadcaster EBC the “incident was carried out by a few extremist individuals”.

“There has been some destruction and loss of lives from all sides,” he said, without offering further details about the identity of the attackers, or the victims.

The cemetery neighbours a mosque and church, and has been the subject of an ongoing dispute between Muslims and Orthodox

Christians, who are the dominant group in Ethiopia.

“Although ongoing wide-ranging measures have been taken to invade the cemetery, the place has been historically, at all times, a Muslim cemetery,” the council said in its statement.

The violence erupted as people clashed over using stones from the area for burial purposes, fighting over whether the materials were being taken from the cemetery, or church compound, the regional government said in a statement.

A senior Muslim official in capital Addis Ababa said on condition of anonymity that “the attack was planned” and the armed men had set fire to the mosque and the Koran.

The city’s mayor said the attackers were extremists who had sought “to burn down, to destroy, to destabilise and to loot Gondar”.

“This in no way represents the Muslim and Christian communities,” he added.

Muslims make up about one third of Ethiopia’s population of 110 million and are a small minority in Amhara, the country’s second-most populous region, which is dominated by Orthodox Christians. –

Attackers sought to burn down, destroy Gondar