BAHIR DAR: A few months ago, farmer Belete Melke was sheltering from a heavy downpour in a remote village in Ethiopia’s Amhara region when suddenly gunfire erupted around him.
“We were caught in the crossfire,” he told AFP, after being struck by a stray bullet.
Northern Amhara is Ethiopia’s second most populated region with roughly 23 million inhabitants, and has endured nearly three years of conflict between the federal army and the “Fano,” Amhara’s self-defense militias.
There is scant public information about the conflict, which sprawls across an area that foreign embassies advise their citizens to avoid thanks to the fighting and risks of kidnapping. And no death toll, which is nonetheless high, has ever been made public.
After Belete was wounded, he traveled to capital Addis Ababa for treatment.
