At least 60 Christians have lost their lives in a series of attacks directed against the Orthodox community in Ethiopia, in a province located in the central part of the country, south of the capital, Addis Ababa, according to a statement made this Monday by the patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.
The victims, all of them Orthodox faithful, died in two distinct assaults recorded on the 20th and 24th of October in respective districts of the Arsi province, in the Oromia region. In addition, the Synod of the Tewahedo Orthodox Church has reported in a statement disseminated by the newspaper "Addis Standard" that more than 20 people have suffered serious injuries and around twenty homes have been reduced to ashes.
The Church, led by Patriarch Abuna Matias I, has expressed its condolences to the relatives of the victims and has condemned "an extremely tragic cruelty and suffering inflicted on our citizens," emphasizing that "such an abject act is totally unacceptable according to any religious teaching or principle of Human Rights."
The spokesperson for the regional Executive, Hailu Adugna, has blamed this escalation of violence on the Coalition for the Survival of Ethiopian Popular Forces (CSFPE), created last September by seven political and armed groups, including the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), with the declared goal of overthrowing Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.
In statements collected by the same newspaper, Adugna has assured that the Coalition, "facing its growing losses, is trying to divert the Government's attention and exacerbate the internal conflict," accusations that the OLA has rejected, insisting that its struggle aims to guarantee greater rights for the Oromo people.
According to a report from the Ethiopian Human Rights Council published last July, more than 450 people have been killed in attacks in that same area over the last four years, many of them specifically directed against the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church.