Between 18 and 29 August, a coalition of forces tied to Abiy Ahmed’s regime tore through Gida-Ayana, Limu-Gelila, and nearby kebeles in East Wollega Zone. The Amhara Association of America’s preliminary report, dated 1 September, puts the confirmed civilian death toll above 68, with more expected once blockaded rural settlements can be counted. Most of the dead were ethnic Amhara or followers of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. Tigrigna speakers and Muslim residents were among the victims too.
Borkena, citing Ethiopia Media Service sources in Gida Ayana, named the Geda Commandos, the Oromia regional force that has haunted Wollega for years. Archpriest Qomos Aba Tadesse was forced out of Andodie Selassie in the middle of a service and killed. Video of the humiliation circulated widely. AAA’s locality totals are grim in their own right: 23 killed in Mender 22, including clergy and an 85-year-old monk and his wife who were dismembered in their home; 21 in Mender 3, where whole families were wiped out in sanctuary and household raids; 17 in Andode; five more in Bechbech. Four historic churches, Kidist Selassie, Lemi-Teklehaimanot, Kidus Giyorgis, and Abuhe, were burned to the ground.
Martin Plaut published an urgent appeal on 29 August that put community estimates far higher, into the hundreds killed, with roughly 15,000 displaced and hundreds of homes destroyed. At the time those reports went out, neither the Ethiopian government nor the Oromia regional administration had issued a serious public accounting. Abiy’s silence is not neutral. The regime in Addis Ababa has run Geda units as a political weapon for years, and naming the force is not decorative.
There is fighting in Wollega, and nobody serious pretends Fano formations are absent from the wider map. That still does not turn house-to-house killings of clergy, elders, and children into collateral. Identity-based raids on churches and farmsteads are a human-rights emergency, not a fog-of-war footnote. Put Qomos Aba Tadesse’s killing on the federal record, open the blockaded kebeles to independent monitors, and stop treating Amhara civilians in East Wollega as expendable.
Sources:
