Targeted attacks in Ataye town and surrounding areas in Ethiopia\u2019s Amhara Regional State have forced thousands of residents to flee into the jungle.<\/p>\n
In what seemed pre-arranged attacks, at least 20 civilians were killed in Ataye, a town sitting 268 kilometres North of the capital Addis Ababa.<\/p>\n
Amhara Region Peace and Security Head Sisay Damte said the attacks are backed by heavy weapons and spreading in surrounding areas. <\/p>\n
Sisay blamed the rebel Oromo Liberation Front – OLF Shene for the attack. Residents of the town said members of the rebel force have been engaged in the looting of resources and robbing banks.<\/p>\n
Ataye, Efrata Gidim, Majete, Jille Timuga are among the target areas of the latest radical Oromo military attacks that transpired in the past two days. <\/p>\n
The OLF, previously designated as a terrorist organization by the Ethiopian parliament, returned to Ethiopia from its base in neighboring Eritrea in September 2018 following a peace deal with the government.<\/p>\n
But it has since been accused of deadly attacks and bank robberies among other crimes especially in the western and southern parts of the country.<\/p>\n
Eyewitnesses \u00a0said the attacks have been committed by armed men whom they are described as \u201corganized, well armed and trained forces.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Targeted attacks in Ataye town and surrounding areas in Ethiopia\u2019s Amhara Regional State have forced thousands of residents to flee into the jungle. In what seemed pre-arranged attacks, at least 20 civilians were killed in Ataye, a town sitting 268 kilometres North of the capital Addis Ababa. Amhara Region Peace and Security Head Sisay Damte […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":269,"featured_media":353479,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-353478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ethiopian-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/Ataye-2.jpg?fit=278%2C181&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-1tXg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/269"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353478"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":353494,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353478\/revisions\/353494"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/353479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}