ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) — Ethiopia’s government says troops killed 15 rebels in the country’s restive east and arrested two Swedish journalists who were with the rebels.
Government spokesman Shimeles Kamal said Monday the journalists were lightly wounded in Tuesday’s clash between troops and rebels. He says the journalists were treated and are in police custody. He says one of the journalists had previously been deported from Ethiopia for engaging with the same group, the Ogaden National Liberation Front. Ethiopia considers the ONLF a terrorist organization.
Journalists are prohibited from traveling freely in the region.
Ethiopia’s Somali region, known as the Ogaden, borders Somalia and has been mired in a low-level insurgency since the early 1990s, when the ONLF intensified its attacks in a fight for greater autonomy.
According to Reuters, the ONLF said it lost contact with the journalists on July 1 and blamed authorities in the breakaway Somali state of Puntland “who facilitated the arrest and passed their information to Ethiopian security agents,” the group added.
