Church Says More Than Sixty Christians Killed in Oromia
The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church says more than sixty people have been killed in a series of attacks on Christians across three areas of the Shirka district in Ethiopia’s Oromia region. A church official called it a massacre and said security forces arrived but could not stop the assault. The regional government says it will act.
This rests on one approved outlet and one institutional claimant, which is said plainly rather than smoothed over: no second approved source carries it and no official death toll has been published, so the figure is the Church’s. What gives it weight is that the outlet has its own eyewitness reporting in Amharic, including a resident whose 75-year-old father was killed: “We were completely unprepared and had no prior knowledge. They surrounded us from all four directions.” Eyewitnesses say five of the dead were children, and a statement from the Holy Synod says twenty houses were burnt to the ground. That statement names no perpetrator. A local official blamed a newly formed rebel coalition that includes the Oromo Liberation Army, which has not commented on this attack and has denied carrying out previous ones — so the attribution is a single official’s, not a finding. The Church says attacks on Christians have been increasing and that it has raised concerns with government repeatedly, with “no solution”. A rights body counted 458 killed in the same area over four years.