Residents report casualties from drone strikes in Ethiopia

Many people living in Ethiopian towns in the Amhara region shared with the BBC that a lot of innocent people were killed by drone attacks on Sunday.

An anonymous resident from Quarit said that there were two different drone attacks in the area. In one of the attacks, the person living there said that “around 30 people died”.

One more person who visited the places where the drone attacks happened said that the strikes occurred in areas far away from where a lot of fighting was happening. There also didn’t seem to be any signs of militants in those areas at that time. He said another drone attack happened in a forest and no one got hurt.

There was another drone attack in Dembecha town that reportedly killed around 18 people. Someone who lives there told the BBC that the attack happened near Michael’s Church and that they helped find and bring back the bodies.

The government has not replied about the supposed drone attacks, even though the BBC tried to talk to them.

The previous month, the BBC shared news about drone attacks in Fnote Salam where over 30 people died and 50 were injured.

The long-lasting fight between Fano forces and federal troops, which started because the government told the militia to join the official security team, reached its highest point in early August.

A new report from the United Nations has recorded over 180 people who have died because of this conflict since July. This shows that over 1,000 people have been arrested in Amhara since the state of emergency was announced.

The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) recently said that government security forces have killed people in the Amhara region without going through the legal process.