Provisional zone level administration claim up to 500 gunmen had surrendered to government forces so far
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Ethiopian authorities are claiming that 240 gunmen operating in the Benishangul Gumuz region, the western part of Ethiopia, have surrendered.
It is the Command Post, a provisional state of the emergency administrative body with a combination of military and civilian authorities installed in areas where there is a serious security problem, that announced it on Saturday, according to a DW Amharic report published on Sunday.
On the other hand, there are voices from opposition parties operating in the region who are claiming that the command post has attacked civilians.
The Gumuz Democratic Movement claimed, as reported by DW Amharic, that the command post inflicted damage on civilians in Dangur, Dibati, and Bullen districts of the Metekel zone.
The opposition has been implicated in having links with the gunmen. The party denies that it has links to the armed opposition ( In the Oromo region, the radical ethnic Oromo nationalist party, has been denying links with the militant groups in the same way).
DW Amharic cited the Kamashi zone provisional administration to report that so far over 500 gunmen had surrendered.
Zone authorities have been warning that it will take measures against those illegally armed groups who fail to surrender to resort to a peaceful life.
The DW Amharic report added that the security situation in the Kamashi zone of the region, where there had been recurring security problems that affected civilians, is improving.
Most parts of the region have been under a state of emergency administration of the Command Post for well over a year now.
Borkena has extensively covered organised atrocities in the region that targeted ethnic Amhara farming communities who had been living in the region for several decades.
Thousands had been killed and hundreds of thousands were displaced from the region. At some point last year, the Federal and regional governments admitted that officials in the government structure had been facilitating the attacks for the gunmen operating in the Benishangul Gumuz and Oromo region of Ethiopia.
In fact, the Benishangul Gumuz region had been at times serving as a ground where radical ethnic Oromo nationalist militants, the government calls them “Shane” and they call themselves “Oromo Liberation Army,” organise and train which usually ends up in massacring innocent civilians.
There was a time when the gunmen launched a brutal massacre soon after the Ethiopian Prime Minister returned from the area where he went to discuss security problems in the region.
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The post Ethiopia: Authorities say 240 gunmen surrendered in Benishangul Gumuz appeared first on Borkena Ethiopian News.