Woodland Daily Democrat - Associated Press

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) -- Uneasy calm returned to Ethiopia's capital on Thursday, a day after riot police fired guns to quell protests against Ethiopia's disputed parliamentary elections. Police killed at least 23 people and wounded dozens more, hospital doctors and health workers said.

Doctors at five hospitals said the bodies of 23 people killed in the clashes were brought to emergency rooms and at least 150 people were treated for injuries, including a 7-year-old boy who was shot in the hip. Doctors refused to give their names for fear of reprisals.

Members of Ethiopia's special forces, in armored personnel carriers, regular troops armed with sniper rifles and federal police patrolled the streets Thursday, the first day of calm after two days of protests.

Ethiopia's information minister, Berhan Hailu, disputed the number of casualties, saying 11 civilians and one police officer were killed, and 54 officers and 28 civilians were injured.

Berhan said demonstrators burned several buses and destroyed four houses, but that calm was returning to the streets of the city of 3 million people later Wednesday. He said the government was "sorry and sad" for the violence, but he blamed it on the main opposition party.

The killing of civilians was a political setback for Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, touted by the Bush administration as a progressive African leader and a key partner in the war on terror.

There were reports of a wave of arrests late Wednesday and early Thursday as federal police went from house to house, detaining young men. Diplomats said around 2,000 people had been arrested.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based media watchdog, said authorities have threatened to arrest journalists and made statements that could endanger independent reporters in the capital.

Several editors and publishers had gone into hiding since the government threatened to detain leaders of the Ethiopian Free Press Journalists' Association and reporters it accused of being mouthpieces for the main opposition party, the Committee to Protect Journalists said.

Businesses were closed and taxis were off the streets in this opposition stronghold. It was unclear whether this was part of a silent protest against the electoral results and subsequent crackdown.

The violence followed clashes Tuesday between protesters and police that killed eight people and wounded 43 others.

The elections gave Meles' Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front control of nearly two-thirds of parliament. Opposition parties say the vote and counting were marred by fraud, intimidation and violence, and accuse the ruling party of rigging the elections.

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