{"id":838502,"date":"2026-10-31T08:20:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-31T12:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/?p=838502"},"modified":"2026-10-31T07:48:49","modified_gmt":"2026-10-31T11:48:49","slug":"relatives-who-buried-victims-of-the-shirka-killings-were-arrested-afterwards-and-some-are-still-held-residents-tell-dw-amharic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/838502","title":{"rendered":"Relatives who buried victims of the Shirka killings were arrested afterwards, and some are still held, residents tell DW Amharic"},"content":{"rendered":"

More than 20 people who travelled to Chole in Arsi’s Shirka district to carry the wounded and bury victims of last week’s massacre were later arrested, and some remain in custody, residents told DW Amharic.<\/p>\n

Residents and relatives of the victims said the arrests targeted people from Gobessa, the district’s main town, who went to Chole kebele, about 19 kilometers away, after the attack of Saturday, October 24. “Why did you go to the mourning, why did you carry the bodies, why did you stand on the road, they said, and very many people were arrested,” one resident told the broadcaster, in Mereja Media’s translation. He said women carrying children were among those detained.<\/p>\n

“It is hard for these people to go there and bury more than 40 people,” he said, adding that some mourners who were cut off by the attackers on the road and spent the night at the site were also arrested after they returned. He said that some of those who went to the site were now hiding because they were being sought, and that the arrests sent a worrying signal to the community instead of easing the conflict and supporting the local tradition of helping one another.<\/p>\n

Another resident, who said he lost his father and his uncle in the attack, told DW that the detainees had gone simply to mourn, and that on that day all the relatives were in Gobessa, so many travelled the 19 kilometers to the site, some in vehicles together with government security forces. He said those who went had been sought for arrest from the day after the attack. According to the residents, many of the detainees have since been released, but some are still being held, and no crime has been explained to them or their families.<\/p>\n

DW Amharic said its attempts to reach the newly appointed district administrator, Abbas, by phone and text message were not successful. After the attack, the Oromia regional government blamed it on an armed group it said was part of a rebel coalition known as Tsimdo, and threatened to take action.<\/p>\n

Other outlets have carried similar accounts with different numbers. Borkena, relaying BBC Amharic, reported that at least 27 people were arrested in Gobessa, including women carrying infants, and that church monitors said at least 13 remained in custody without appearing in court. The Abay Times quoted a Gobessa resident as saying at least 50 people were being held at the town’s police station. None of the counts is official. The Centre for Information Resilience, a research group, said it had verified and geolocated imagery of a mass burial site at St Rufael’s Orthodox Church in Chole containing 33 bodies.<\/p>\n

The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church has said that at least 60 of its faithful were killed in two attacks in Arsi last week, 14 in Merti district on October 20 and 46 in Shirka on October 24, and that more than 20 people were seriously wounded. Residents have described armed men surrounding the villages of Tereta, Chole and Birbo and going from house to house.<\/p>\n

The killings have drawn wide anger. Mesfin Mekonen (@mmekonen1), a Washington based author according to his X profile, posted on Friday that “Ethiopia’s Arsi massacres demand congressional leadership and urgent international action,” saying US lawmakers had condemned the attacks on Orthodox Christians. The account @ETHDefenders wrote that the killings in Shirka “are followed by mass arrests, intimidation” of survivors. Abebaw Debas (@M_abebawD) shared data from the conflict monitor ACLED showing 193 incidents of violence against civilians in Arsi since February 2023, about a third of them targeting Orthodox Christian residents.<\/p>\n

Mereja Media asked the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission and the Government Communication Service on Friday how many mourners and relatives were arrested, on what grounds, how many remain in custody and whether anyone has been arrested over the attack itself. Neither had responded by the time of publication, and the residents’ accounts could not be independently confirmed.<\/p>\n

The residents said the arrests had deepened fear in the area, where, in the words of one of them, what they saw “shows that there is a problem here too, and it does not give hope.”<\/p>\n

Sources<\/h4>\n