Photos: YouTube Screenshots
Since April the Ethiopian government, in the form of the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) have been engaged in violent clashes throughout the Amhara region in Ethiopia, with the volunteer force known as Fano.
The ENDF have used drones, tanks and heavy artillery against Fano freedom fighters, resulting, inevitably in the death of hundreds of civilians. “It is difficult to quantify the damage done…Many corpses are entering the hospital,” a doctor at the Bahir Dar Yelk Hayat Referral Hospital, told the BBC.
Associated Press (AP),14 August, reported that, “at least 70 civilians have been killed in drone attacks in Fenote Selam town in Ethiopia’s Amhara regional state.”AP confirmed that the “Ethiopian air force …carried out the drone attacks in Bure town [Aug. 13] and killed an undisclosed number of civilians and injured several others.”
The conflict, between the ENDF and Fano, a volunteer group made up of men and women from the community, trusted and revered throughout Amhara, comes on the back of a series of interconnected assaults and injustices perpetrated against the Amhara people by the government, led by Prime-minister Abiy Ahmed.
First, and most shocking is the genocide of Amhara people living in Oromia, which has been going on for the last three years or so. Thousands of Amhara civilians have been killed, over two million displaced, homes and land stolen. And in a brutal act, typical of genocide elsewhere, pregnant Amhara women are specifically targeted; their stomachs stabbed, babies murdered. In addition, thousands of non-Oromo’s, specifically but not exclusively Amhara, have seen their homes demolished in Sheger City on the outskirts of the capital, Addis Ababa.
