Four people were killed in
southeastern Ethiopia when Muslim protesters attacked a police
station following the arrest of a preacher, said State Minister
of Communications Shimeles Kemal.
The deaths occurred on April 27 in Asasa, in the Arsi Zone
of Oromia region, after a crowd tried to free the imam, Shimeles
said in a phone interview today from Addis Ababa, the capital.
Ten policemen were injured, the police station and post office
burned down and 24 people arrested, he said.
“A certain imam, an Islamic fundamentalist, had been trying
to instigate jihad,” said Shimeles. “When police arrested him,
his supporters tried to get him released forcefully.”
Incidents of religious strife in Ethiopia are rare, though
there have been fatal sectarian clashes in the southwest of the
country in recent years. Ethiopia is Africa’s second-most
populous nation, after Nigeria. Its people are 44 percent
Ethiopian Orthodox Christian, 34 percent Muslim and 19 percent
Protestant, according to the CIA World Factbook.
An al-Qaeda cell containing a “few Salafist extremists” was
captured in Arsi, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi told lawmakers on
April 17, without providing further details, according to the
Foreign Ministry. To contact the reporter on this story:
William Davison in Addis Ababa via Nairobi at
pmrichardson@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Paul Richardson in Nairobi at
pmrichardson@bloomberg.net.
No comments:
Post a Comment