Ethiopia says it killed 41 Somali insurgents trained by Eritrea
ADDIS ABABA, April 23 (AFP) — The Ethiopian army has over the past five days killed 41 insurgents who claimed to have been trained by the Eritrean government and captured a further 36, security officials said Saturday.
“Up to today, we have killed 41 of the insurgents and captured 36 of them while they were trying to infiltrate the (Ethiopian) state (of Somali) to create havoc.
“We are still chasing the remaining ones,” Jemiel Hajji Mohammed, the chief security officer for Ethiopia’s Somali state told AFP Saturday, adding that hundreds of firearms were recovered from the fighters.
Jemiel said the insurgents were allied to two groups from neighbouring Somalia: Al-Ittihad, a religious group based in Somalia and National Liberation Front (ONLF), which is based in southeastern Ethiopia.
According to Jemiel, the captured insurgents all claimed that they were trained by Eritrea, a country that fought a two-year border war with Ethiopia that started in 1998 and claimed tens of thousands of lives on both sides of the border. Tension between the two neighbours has risen in recent weeks.
“All the captured insurgents have confirmed that they were in Eritrean training camps, trained and armed by the regime and transported by Eritrean planes to (the Somali town of) Dusamarbeer in Somalia,” Mohammed said.
From Dusamarbeer the insurgents were ferried to Shilabo on the Ethiopia-Somalia border, about 1,750 kilometres southeast of the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, he said.
“They tried to infiltrate (Ethiopia) on Monday, but were spotted by the defense forces,” Mohammed said, adding: “When they were asked to surrender peacefully they instead engaged the defense forces”.
He added that the security forces are still engaged in “mopping-up” operations and that the number of dead “could increase”.
It was not clear whether the Ethiopian army also suffered casualities.
Among the arms recovered were kalashnikov rifles, machine guns and hand grenades, Jemiel said.