Ethiopian Rebels Attack Oil Field , Killing 74 and Destroying Facility
By ANITA POWELL
By ANITA POWELL
The Associated Press
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia – Ethiopian rebels who have fought alongside Islamic militants in neighboring Somalia stormed a Chinese- run oil field at dawn Tuesday, killing 74 people and destroying the exploration facility in a restive border region.
It was the first such attack on a foreign company in this Horn of Africa nation, in contrast to Nigeria on the western side of the continent, where rebel groups frequently attack international oil concerns.
Chinese officials said nine Chinese oil workers and 65 Ethiopians died, and seven Chinese were taken away by the rebels. It wasn’t known if the rebels suffered any casualties.
The assault by more than 200 gunmen lasted nearly an hour, and followed a warning last year from the rebel Ogaden National Liberation Front against any investment in eastern Ethiopia’s Ogaden area that could benefit the U.S.-allied government.
Formed by Ethiopia’s ethnic Somali minority, the Muslim group has been fighting for secession of the Britain-sized region with 4 million inhabitants since the early 1990s, but it had mounted only occasional hit-and-run attacks on government troops in recent years.
The large scale of the attack at the small town of Abole, close to the border with Somalia, raised the prospect of a broadening of the fighting in Somalia, where the Ethiopian army is supporting the U.N.-backed interim Somali government in a war with Islamic insurgents.
“This was a cold-blooded killing,” Bereket Simon, a special adviser to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, told The Associated Press.
J. Stephen Morrison, director of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said the Ogaden rebels are a “convenient vehicle for those who want to destabilize Ethiopia.” He said both Somalia’s Islamic militants and the government of Eritrea could be backers.
Princeton Lyman, an Africa expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, urged caution in assigning blame. He said it was possible the Eritreans could encourage such attacks, but he added that the Ogaden rebels might simply have been emboldened by the fighting in Somalia.
The rebels have fought on behalf of the Somalia insurgents, while Ethiopia and Eritrea are bitter foes.
Eritreans won their independence from Ethiopia in 1991 after a bloody three-decade rebellion, and the two nations fought a 21/2- year war over their disputed border that ended in 2000. Ethiopia has accused Eritrea of waging terror attacks, a charge Eritrea denies.
A spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Liu Jianchao, condemned the attack, China’s official Xinhua News Agency said.
Xinhua said the attackers fought 100 Ethiopian soldiers protecting the facility in a 50-minute gunbattle. It said the company had 157 Chinese and Ethiopian workers at the facility.
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