JIGJIGA (Halbeeg) – At least 200 Somali people have been caught up in the conflict between two of Ethiopia’s largest ethnic groups at Somali-Oromia border.
Most dramatically, tensions between ethnic Somali and Oromo ethnic groups and conflict along the border separating the two regions led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands in recent months, most of whom have no place to return.
Ali Muhumad Abdi is one of the hundreds of people driven from their homes by a land and ethnicity-fuelled crisis that has gripped the Horn of Africa nation for years and escalated in recent months.
Speaking to the media, Abdi said he and several other families took sanctuary in a police camp in Guji town.
” We are 200 in number, a number of Women delivered inside the police camp, we comprise of elderly people, children, women, and men. We cannot leave the camp because Oromo fighters are outside to kill us,” Abdi said, ” we are staying at the camp with no food, no water, nothing. It’s heartbreaking.”
The sentiment comes barely five days after Ethiopian prime minister, Abiy Ahmed order members of the Ethiopian defense force and the federal police to be deployed to stabilize conflict-ridden parts of Ethiopia.
Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation (EBC) reported that Ethio-Somali and Oromo region presidents held a discussion following the decision by the PM and agreed on the immediate deployment of Federal police and the defense force along areas adjacent to the two regional estates.
Abiy Ahmed called for the military and the police forces’ intervention to quell the bloodshed.
Hundreds of citizens are reportedly killed in Ethio-Somali region, Oromo region, and Southern Ethiopia region in the past few weeks.
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