Ethiopia Declares State of Emergency in Amhara

Not only Tigray is in crisis and at war.
Another conflict is happening almost unobserved and far from the media spotlight.

On Sunday, the Minister of Defense declared that in the last three days there had been deadly armed violence in the city of Ataye and in many other areas in Oromia special zones.

For these reasons, Ethiopia declared a state of emergency in the southern part of Amhara regional state.

The Minister of Defence confirmed that in the several days of attacks by armed men in these areas, an unspecified number of people had been killed, and a considerable amount of land and property had been destroyed.
Many people fled from the attacks.

The statement goes on to say that armed traffic would not be authorized to pass through from Debre Sina, in North Shewa, to the city of Kembolcha.

He also suggested that “government structures” in the central areas of the country, located only 250 kilometres from the capital city Addis Abeba, were also involved in the violence.

The areas in question are those inhabited by the Amhara and Oromo ethnic groups.
The statement said that there are armed forces at work to pit the two ethnic groups against each other.

In addition, it expressed the fact that the federal army was collaborating with the people in order to repress violence in many other places across the country.

This situation brings to light that even the situation outside the regional borders of Tigray is unstable and unsafe. These events, which have been going on for months, are the apex of tensions that have been endemic for decades.

They will be a variable to consider when assessing the course of the elections in June 2021.