More than 50 Orthodox Christians have been killed in an attack on a village in Ethiopia’s East Arsi zone, according to local sources, the third mass killing of members of the church in the area in less than three weeks.
Armed men struck Endato, in the Oromia region, on Thursday. Ethiopian media initially confirmed 34 deaths. Local sources now say more than 50 bodies have been recovered, and the toll may rise further.
Residents described an assault carried out with mortars and sniper rifles, after which homes and shops were looted and set alight and livestock was driven off. The attackers have not been identified and no group has claimed responsibility.
The raid extends a run of violence that has alarmed church leaders. On 20 October, 14 people were killed in Merti district. Four days later, 46 more died in Shirka, according to the Holy Synod of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, which called the October attacks “brutal and merciless massacres”. More than 20 people were seriously injured in the two attacks, the Synod said.
After the October killings, Oromia’s regional government blamed the Oromo Liberation Army, the insurgent group that has fought federal forces in the region for years. The OLA denies targeting civilians.
A pattern of attacks on Orthodox Christians a
Oromia is Ethiopia’s largest state, home to about 40mn people from Muslim, Protestant and Orthodox communities, and has endured a long-running insurgency in which armed groups have increasingly exploited religious and ethnic divisions.
Arsi has become one of its most dangerous areas for Orthodox Christians. In June, the state-appointed Ethiopian Human Rights Commission confirmed the destruction of Saint Gabriel’s Church in Teleta, a century-old building burned during a wave of attacks that coincided with the country’s national elections.
The Ethiopian Human Rights Council, an independent monitor known as EHRCO, said in a report in July that at least 432 civilians and four local militia members had been killed in armed attacks across East Arsi since 2021, and that more than 14,000 people had been displaced. The group documented killings, kidnappings, looting and the destruction of property, as well as mass abductions in Shirka, where relatives said gunmen went house to house at night selecting Orthodox Christians.
The October and November attacks, which together have killed more than 110 people by local and church counts, come on top of that total.
Calls for an inquiry
The European Centre for Law and Justice, a Strasbourg-based advocacy group, said on 3 November that the Ethiopian government had “clearly lost control” of the area and called for an independent investigation.
International scrutiny of abuses in Ethiopia has thinned. The UN’s International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia, set up in 2021 during the war in Tigray, was wound up in 2023 when its mandate was not renewed, leaving no dedicated UN mechanism to investigate atrocities in the country.
The violence adds to the security pressures on Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government, which since the end of the Tigray war in 2022 has struggled to contain armed insurgencies in both Oromia and Amhara, the country’s two most populous regions.
For residents of Arsi, the more immediate question is whether anyone will protect them before the next attack.
Sources: local sources; Mahibere Kidusan TV via Borkena; Anadolu via Worthy News; Oromia regional government via AP; Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church Holy Synod; Ethiopian Human Rights Commission; Ethiopian Human Rights Council (EHRCO); European Centre for Law and Justice.
