Uneasy calm returns to Addis Ababa
Uneasy calm returned to the Ethiopian capital today, a day after riot police across Addis Ababa fired guns to quell a second day of protests against the country’s disputed parliamentary elections.
Police killed at least 23 people and wounded dozens more, hospital doctors and health workers said.
Doctors at five hospitals said the bodies of 23 people killed in the clashes were brought to emergency rooms and at least 150 people were treated for injuries, including a seven-year-old boy who was shot in the hip. Earlier the hospital count was 27 dead and there was no explanation for the revision. Doctors refused to give their names for fear of reprisals.
Information Minister Berhan Hailu said the figures were exaggerated, and said 11 civilians and one police officer were killed, and 54 officers and 28 civilians were injured.
Adam Melaku, head of the independent Ethiopian Human Rights Council, yesterday revised earlier figures his group gave of 33 people killed, saying that they now had established that they believed at least eight people were killed in the fighting. He did not give any explanation for the revision or the higher number given earlier in the day.
He said demonstrators burned several buses and destroyed four houses, but that calm was returning to the streets of the city of three million people later. He said the government was “sorry and sad” for the violence, but he blamed it on the main opposition party.
Members of Ethiopia’s special forces, in armoured personnel carriers, regular troops armed with sniper rifles and federal police patrolled the streets today.
There were reports of a massive wave of arrests late yesterday and early today as federal police went from house to house, detaining young men. Diplomats said around 2,000 people had been arrested.
Businesses were closed and taxis were off the streets in the city. It was unclear whether this was part of a silent protest against the electoral results and subsequent crackdown.
The violence followed clashes on Tuesday between protesters and police that killed eight people and wounded 43 others. Those renewed clashes erupted after 30 taxi drivers were arrested on Monday for participating in demonstrations against the May 15 parliamentary elections – a vote seen as a test of Prime Minister Zenawi Mels’ commitment to reform.
The elections gave Meles’ Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front control of nearly two-thirds of parliament. Opposition parties say the vote and counting were marred by fraud, intimidation and violence, and accuse the ruling party of rigging the elections.
One man said officers broke into his family’s housing compound yesterday, firing guns indiscriminately as they searched for the demonstrators who threw stones to express their unhappiness with the elections.
Machine-gun fire and explosions rocked the capital, an opposition stronghold, and armoured personnel carriers carrying special forces troops rumbled down streets littered with burning tires and broken glass.
The violence spread across the city, reaching the doorsteps of the British, French, Kenyan and Belgian embassies – all located in different parts of the capital. Workers at UN headquarters were told not to leave their offices.
Police surrounded Zewditu Hospital, dragging out and arresting young men. Witnesses said security forces were rounding up young people in various parts of the city.
Tigist Daniel, 16, said she brought her 50-year-old mother to a hospital after police shot her in the stomach.
