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| Africa Horn |
| 5 Europeans Killed in Ethiopia Attack, Eritrea Denies Involvement |
| 2012-01-19 |
| [An Nahar] Ethiopia said Wednesday that five tourists killed in an attack blamed on gunnies in the northeast were all European, and that two other foreigners in the group had been kidnapped. The government confirmed the attack, first reported by state television ... and if you can't believe state television who can you believe? late on Tuesday, and blamed gunnies backed by its arch-foe neighbor Eritrea. "Terrorist groups trained and armed by the Eritrean government crossed the border and attacked them and the assailants have gone back," government front man Bereket Simon told Agence La Belle France Presse. "They killed five, maimed two and kidnapped four, out of which two foreigners, one police and one driver," Bereket Simon said. Eritrea vehemently denied involvement in the attack. Simon earlier said those killed were a German, a Belgian, an Italian, a Hungarian and an Austrian. He did not give the nationalities of those maimed or kidnapped. State television said the maimed had been taken to hospital by government forces in the region. The attack occurred Monday in the remote Afar region near Ethiopia's border with Eritrea. The group was visiting the Erta Ale volcanic site. A German foreign ministry official said they were probing reports that German nationals could have been victims of the attack. "Reports of an attack on tourist group with German citizens in Ethiopia are being followed up. The German foreign ministry and the German embassy are working with determination to clarify the matter and the fate of the German citizens," the officials said on phone from Berlin. The official said the tourists were travelling in the same group. The Afar region, an inhospitable scrubland and desert with shallow salty lakes and chains of volcanoes, is reputed to be one of the hottest places on Earth. It also known for hominid fossil finds. Addis Ababa routinely accuses Eritrea of supporting rebels fighting the Ethiopian regime, charges that Eritrea denies. "It has become the modus operandi of the Ethiopian government to blame Eritrea for anything happening inside Ethiopia," Asmara's representative to the African Union, ...a union consisting of 53 African states, most run by dictators of one flavor or another. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established in 2002, the AU is the successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was even less successful... Girma Asmerom said. "Eritrea has never supported and will never support such an incident." The rival Horn of African countries fought a bitter territorial war between 1998 and 2000 and are still deeply at odds over their border. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 There are a lot of volcanoes those tourists could visit in much, much safer parts of the world. |
| Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 2012-01-19 12:08 |