Addis Ababa, ETHIOPIA
The man accused of trying to seize control of Ethiopia’s northern Amhara
region was on the run with some of his supporters on Monday but a number of
other plotters have been arrested, a senior government official said.
The government says General Asamnew
Tsige (pictured) masterminded gun attacks on Saturday night that killed five people
including the national army’s chief of staff and Amhara’s state president.
“The main people behind the failed
coup are still at large and the security forces are hunting them,” the prime
minister’s press secretary, Negussu Tilahun, said.
Army chief of staff Seare Mekonnen
and a retired general were shot by Seare’s bodyguard at his residence in the
national capital Addis Ababa, the prime minister’s office said.
Amhara state president Ambachew
Mekonnen and an adviser were killed in the region’s main city Bahir Dar, it
added. Amhara’s attorney general was also shot, and died of his wounds on
Monday, state media reported.
Access to the internet appeared to be
blocked across Ethiopia, users reported. The streets of Addis Ababa appeared
calm on Monday.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has pushed
through sweeping changes since coming to power in April last year, making peace
with Eritrea, reining in the security services, releasing political prisoners
and lifting bans on some outlawed separatist groups.
The reforms in Africa’s second-most
populous country have won him widespread international praise.
But the premier’s shake-up of the
military and intelligence services has earned him powerful enemies at home,
while his government is struggling to contain powerful figures in Ethiopia’s
myriad ethnic groups fighting the federal government and each other for greater
influence and resources.
The shooting in Bahir Dar occurred when
the state president - an ally of Abiy - was holding a meeting to decide how to
stop Asamnew’s open recruitment of ethnic Amhara militias, one Addis-based
official told Reuters.
Asamnew had told the Amhara people to
arm themselves and prepare for fighting against other groups, in a video spread
on Facebook a week earlier.
Asamnew himself was released from
prison last year after receiving an amnesty for a similar coup attempt.
William Davison, an Ethiopia analyst
at global think-tank Crisis Group, said more information was needed on the
attack on Seare.
“It doesn’t appear to have been a
concerted national coup attempt. It’s not obvious what the motivations were for
anyone to assassinate the chief of staff, or whether he had any connections to
the violence in Bahir Dar,” he said. “More detail is needed on that aspect.”
Long-simmering ethnic tensions in
Amhara and other areas has surged since Abiy’s reforms. At least 2.4 million
people have fled fighting, according to the United Nations.
Ethiopia will observe a day of
national mourning on Monday, parliament speaker Tagesse Chafo said on state
television.
Ethiopia is due to hold parliamentary
elections next year, although the electoral board warned earlier this month
that they were behind schedule and that instability could cause a problem for
polling.
Amhara is home to Ethiopia’s second
largest ethnic group and gives its name to the state language, Amharic.
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