Ethiopia says kills 32 Eritrea-trained raiders
By Tsegaye Tadesse
ADDIS ABABA, April 22 (Reuters) – Ethiopia said on Friday its army killed 32 armed men sent by former foe Eritrea to raise havoc before Ethiopia’s May elections, a charge Eritrea denied saying its policy was to stay out of other countries’ affairs.
There was no independent word available on the motives and identity of the 32 dead, nor of the 33 other people an Ethiopian security official said were captured in the clashes on Monday.
Eritrea and Ethiopia fought a 1998-2000 border war that killed 70,000. An independent commission awarded Eritrea a disputed border town, but Ethiopia has only accepted the ruling in principle and the frontier has yet to be demarcated.
In recent months rhetoric over the border situation has been heating up and the United Nations said Ethiopia had moved troops closer to the U.N.-patrolled security zone separating the two.
Jemil Hadji, head of security of Ethiopia’s Somali region, said members of the armed gang were Somali men who said they belonged to the rebel Ogaden National Liberation Movement, a group of ethnic Somalis fighting for independence from Ethiopia. “The Eritrean authorities airlifted the armed group to Dusamarbeer town inside Somalia on Monday and they were then told to cross into Ethiopia with instructions to create havoc and disrupt next month’s national election,” he said.
Eritrean Information Minister Ali Abdu in a statement said Eritrea’s foreign policy was “refraining from interference in the internal affairs of another sovereign state”.
Abdu said Ethiopia itself was arming Somali opposition factions, “triggering clashes among them in its despicable bid to foil any chances that a national reconciliation in Somalia may stand.”
Ethiopia was blaming Eritrea in an attempt to divert attention away from its actions, Abdu said.
Jemil said the Somalis told them they had been lured to Eritrea with the promise of higher education.
“The Eritrean-trained armed group, which numbered over 300 was spotted while crossing the border from Somalia near Shilabo,” Jemil told Reuters over the telephone from Jijjiga, the capital of the Somali region.
Shilabo is 1,500 km (932 miles) east of Addis Ababa on the border with lawless Somalia.
On May 15, 36 political parties will vie for seats in Ethiopia’s 547-member federal parliament. The ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front is strongly favoured to win.