ADDIS ABABA, Aug. 14 (Xinhua) -- At least 41 people have been killed and 20 others injured over the weekend in Ethiopia's Oromia regional state during a raid by armed attackers from a neighboring regional state, state media Ethiopia Broadcasting Corporation (EBC) said on Tuesday.
Meski Mohammed, Chief Communications Officer of East Haraghe zone, Oromia regional state, said the attackers were members of the Somali regional state "special police force" division and that scores of people have fled the area fearing further attacks.
Somali regional state "special police force" was formed a decade ago to fight an escalating insurgency by the rebel group Ogaden national Liberation Front (ONLF).
It has since then been credited with taking the sting out of the insurgency, but the police force has also been accused of human rights abuses and carrying out deadly attacks on neighboring ethnic Oromo settlements.
Mohammed did not give possible reasons for the latest violence, but heavy clashes along the Oromia-Somali boundary since September 2017 has spilled into ethnic violence, leaving hundreds dead and hundreds of thousands displaced.
Oromia and Somali regional states have been locked in a dispute over the delineation of their common boundary for almost two decades.
A referendum in October 2004 was supposed to demarcate the boundary between the two regional states, but its implementation has been stalled ever since with both sides accusing each other of non-compliance.
