The attack took place in the village of Bekoji in Bulen province in the Metekel zone, the state-run Ethiopian Human Rights Commission said in a statement, an area home to multiple ethnic groups.
Africa’s second-most populous country has grappled with regular outbreaks of deadly violence since Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed was appointed in 2018, and accelerated democratic reforms that loosened the state’s iron grip on regional rivalries.
Elections scheduled for next year have further fueled mounting tensions over land, energy and resources.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said on Thursday that he had deployed troops in the western Benishangul-Gumuz region.
“The massacre of civilians in the Benishangul-Gumuz region is very tragic,” Abiy said on Twitter. “The government has deployed a necessary force to resolve the root causes of the problem.
In a separate part of the country, the Ethiopian army has been fighting rebels in the northern Tigray region for more than six weeks in a conflict that has displaced nearly 950,000 people. The deployment of federal troops there has raised fears of a security vacuum in other troubled regions.
Ethiopia is also fighting an uprising in the Oromiya region and is facing long-term security threats from Somali Islamist militants along the porous eastern border.
Gashu Dugaz, a senior regional security official, said authorities were aware of the Benishangul-Gumuz attack and were verifying the identities of the attackers and victims, but gave no further information.
The region is home to several ethnic groups, including the Gumuz people. But in recent years, farmers and businessmen from the neighboring Amhara region have begun to move into the area, leading some Gumuz to complain that fertile land has been taken.
Some Amhara leaders are now saying that some of the land in the region – especially in the Metekel zone – is rightfully theirs, claims that have angered Gumuz people.
“In previous attacks it was people who came from ‘the woods’ who were involved, but in this case the victims said they knew the people involved in the attack,” the rights committee said in its statement.
Belay Wajera, a farmer in the western town of Bulen, told Reuters that after Wednesday’s raid, he had counted 82 corpses in a field near his home. He and his family woke up to the sound of gunfire and ran out of their house while men shouted “catch them,” he said. His wife and five of his children were shot, he was shot in the buttocks while four other children escaped and are now missing, Wajera told Reuters by phone late on Wednesday.
Another resident of the city, Hassen Yimama, said gunmen stormed the area around 6 a.m. local time. He told Reuters he counted 20 bodies in a different location. He took out his own weapon, but attackers shot him in the stomach.
A local physician said he and his colleagues treated 38 wounded, most of them gunshot wounds. Patients told him about family members who had been killed with knives and told him that gunmen set fire to houses and shot at people trying to escape, he said.
“We were not prepared for this and we are out of drugs,” a nurse in the same facility told Reuters, adding that a five-year-old child died while being transferred to the clinic.
The attack came a day after Abiy, the military chief of staff and other senior federal officials visited the region to press for calm after several deadly incidents in recent months, including a Nov. 14 attack that targeted a bus with gunmen. and killed 34 people.
“The desire of enemies to divide Ethiopia along ethnic and religious lines still persists. This desire will remain unfulfilled,” Abiy tweeted Tuesday along with photos of his encounters that day in the city of Metekel, near the November 14 attack.
He said the residents’ desire for peace “outweighs any divisive agenda.”
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said on Thursday that he had deployed troops in the western Benishangul-Gumuz region, a day after gunmen killed more than 100 people in the area, which has seen regular ethnic violence.
On Wednesday, the state-run Ethiopian Human Rights Commission said gunmen had killed more than 100 people in a morning attack in the village of Bekoji in Bulen province in the Metekel Zone, an area home to numerous ethnic groups.
“The massacre of civilians in the Benishangul-Gumuz region is very tragic,” Abiy said on Twitter. “The government has deployed a necessary force to resolve the root causes of the problem.