July 7. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The lower house of the Ethiopian Parliament has approved the creation of a “special committee” to investigate the recent massacres of civilians, which have left hundreds of victims and have been blamed on the rebel group Oromo Liberation Army (OLA).
The body has held a special session to address the security situation in various regions of the country and has approved holding a minute of silence in honor of “unjustly massacred citizens” and creating the aforementioned body, without specifying its composition.
The final resolution of the session states that the committee must “take diversity into account” to “investigate and provide adequate information to the House of People’s Representatives and the population and recommendations for future actions,” according to the Ethiopian newspaper ‘Addis Standard ‘.
Likewise, it stresses that work must be done so that “those responsible for the deaths, injuries and damage to civilian property in any region or area are held accountable,” while stressing the importance of achieving the “urgent” return of the displaced.
The Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Abiy Ahmed, accused the OLA on Monday of a new “massacre” of members of the Amhara community in the Oromia region and promised to “eliminate” the group, amid reports that point to the death of close than 200 people in an attack against the town of Mechara Lemlem.
The event took place less than a week after the Ethiopian authorities raised the number of civilians massacred to around 340 in an attack carried out in mid-June by suspected members of the OLA against the town of Tole Kebele, located in the Oromia region, in amid the worsening security situation in the African country.
The area of Oromía in which the attack was carried out is close to the Gambela region, where dozens of people have died in recent days in an attack also blamed on members of the OLA, which has increased its activities in recent months. The group has dissociated itself from the attack in Oromia.
The OLA, split from the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) after the 2018 peace agreement, has claimed responsibility for several attacks –especially in Oromia– in recent months. The OLF fought for decades for the secession of the Oromia region, but in 2018 it announced that it was giving up the armed struggle, accepting the prime minister’s offer of amnesty.
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