ADDIS ABABA: In an attack on Muslims during the funeral of a Muslim elder in the Ethiopian city of Gondar, a local Islamic group reported that over 20 people were slain.
Amhara’s Islamic Affairs Council denounced Tuesday’s attack on a cemetery in Gondar as a “massacre” perpetrated by highly armed “extremist Christians.”
Religious leaders said the assailants “launched a bombardment of powerful machine guns and grenades… leaving several dead while others who were injured have been rushed to hospital,” according to their statement.
“More than 20 people have been killed and Muslim houses have been looted because of yesterday’s incident,” the statement reads.
Mayor Zewdu Malede of Gondar informed Ethiopia’s state television EBC that a few radical persons carried out the “event. “
As for the assailants or victims, he only claimed that “some devastation and loss of lives had been suffered from both sides.”
Within one hour, “the matter had been resolved.”
There has been a long-running disagreement between Ethiopia’s leading Christian and Muslim groups over the cemetery where the incident happened.
However, despite continued wide-ranging attempts to infiltrate the cemetery, it has always been a Muslim burial ground, according to an Islamic Affairs Council statement.
A dispute about whether stones were being stolen from a cemetery or a church property exploded into violence on Tuesday, according to a statement from the Amhara regional authority.
The government referred to the murdered Muslim senior as “a father to Gondar city citizens, Gondar Christians and Muslims and a father to everyone” and committed to investigate the incident and punish the offenders responsible.
Works at The Truth International Magazine. My area of interest includes international relations, peace & conflict studies, qualitative & quantitative research in social sciences, and world politics. Reach@ [email protected]
