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Rioting spreads in Ethiopia
03/11/2005 13:20 - (SA)
Anthony Mitchell
Addis Ababa - Riot police across the capital fired guns to quell another day of protests against Ethiopia's disputed parliamentary elections. Police killed at least 23 people and wounded dozens more, said hospital doctors and health workers.
Adam Melaku, head of the independent Ethiopian Human Rights Council, on Wednesday revised earlier figures his group gave of 33 people killed, saying they now had established that they believed at least eight people were killed in the fighting. He did not give any explanation for the revision or the higher number given earlier in the day.
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 seven-year-old boy who was shot in the hip. Earlier the hospital count was 27 dead and there was no explanation for the revision. Doctors refused to give their names for fear of reprisals.
Government blames opposition
Information minister Berhan Hailu said the figures were exaggerated, and said 11 civilians and one police officer were killed, and 54 officers and 28 civilians were injured.
He said demonstrators burned several buses and destroyed four houses, but calm was returning to the streets of the city of three million people on Wednesday. He said the government was "sorry and sad" for the violence, but he blamed it on the main opposition party.
The violence followed clashes on Tuesday between protesters and police that killed eight people and wounded 43 others. Those renewed clashes erupted after 30 taxi drivers were arrested on Monday for participating in demonstrations against the May 15 parliamentary elections - a vote seen as a test of Prime Minister Zenawi Meles' commitment to reform.
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.
Widespread violence
One man said officers broke into his family's housing compound on Wednesday, firing guns indiscriminately as they searched for the demonstrators who threw stones to express their unhappiness with the elections.
Machine-gun fire and explosions rocked the capital, an opposition stronghold, and armoured personnel carriers carrying special forces troops rumbled down streets littered with burning tires and broken glass.
The violence spread across the city, reaching the doorsteps of the British, French, Kenyan and Belgian embassies - all located in different parts of the capital.
Police surrounded Zewditu Hospital, dragging out and arresting young men. Witnesses said security forces were rounding up young people in various parts of the city.
Tigist Daniel, 16, said she brought her 50-year-old mother to a hospital after police shot her in the stomach.
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