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| ONLF rebels celebrating their festival in Mogadishu, last year (AFP) |
Ethiopia on Wednesday accused arch-foe Eritrea of supporting the rebels behind an attack on a remote Chinese-run oil field that killed 74 people, including nine Chinese workers.
Eritrea immediately denied the claim — the latest in a string of accusations and counter-accusations between the rival neighbours.
“The perpetrator of the terrorist attack … is the self-styled Ogaden National Liberation Front, a terrorist wing which is part of the front of destruction led by the Eritrean government,” the Ethiopian Information Ministry said in a statement.
Up to seven Chinese workers were kidnapped in Tuesday’s dawn raid on the oil field in Ethiopia’s eastern Ogaden region, where the rebel group is fighting for the independence of ethnic Somalis.
“Hand-in-glove with the Eritrean Government, which hates to see Ethiopia’s development, the terrorist forces in the region have acted out this horrendous act of terror,” the statement said.
Eritrea rejected the accusations, claiming Addis Ababa was seeking to trigger a war.
“The accusations are baseless,” Eritrean Information Minister Ali Abdu said. “They want to create a pretext to take belligerent measures against Eritrea.”
Ali said the ONLF was the result of a “failed Ethiopian racial policy” that had splintered Ethiopia into more than 30 rival ethnic groups.
“It is becoming clear that these kind of statements are intended to divert attention from Ethiopia’s own domestic crisis,” he told AFP.
Addis Ababa often accuses Eritrea of backing Ethiopian separatist groups that have carried out a series of bombs attacks in Addis Ababa in recent years, and of attacking civilian positions in southern and eastern Ethiopia.
The two nations, still at odds over an unresolved border dispute, fought a bloody 1998-2000 over the precise demarcation of their frontier.
Ethiopia said Wednesday that it would send an investigation team to the Ogaden oil field, a government spokesman told AFP.
“Officials of the government are going there today, along with defense officials to assess the situation,” said Berekat Simon, spokesman for Prime Minster Meles Zenawi.
“The government is committed to pursuing the perpetrators to bring them to justice,” he added, making no comment about the abducted Chinese workers.
The ONLF said in an email to AFP on Tuesday that it was holding six Chinese workers and that they were being treated well. Chinese and Ethiopian officials had said seven Chinese were being held.
It claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s attack in a statement on its website in which it said it had completely destroyed the oil facility.
The raid was the first on an Ethiopian oil field since the ONLF issued a threat to foreign companies operating in the eastern region one year ago.
The separatist group, formed in 1984, says that the Ogaden people have been marginalised and brutalised by Ethiopia.
Ogaden rebels destroy Chinese-run oilfield, kill 74
The Ogaden National Liberation Front, an ethnic Somali group that has fought alongside insurgents in Somalia, also kidnapped seven Chinese workers, said Bereket Simon, an adviser to the Ethiopian prime minister.
“This was a cold-blooded killing,” Bereket told The Associated Press. “This was organized.”
In a statement sent to The AP, the rebel group said it had launched “military operations against units of the Ethiopian armed forces guarding an oil exploration site,” in the east of the country.
It also warned international oil companies not to operate in the region. Without offering details, the statement said rebels “wiped out” three Ethiopian military units and destroyed the facility.
China’s official Xinhua news agency identified the Chinese workers and Ethiopian guards as employees of the Zhongyuan Petroleum Exploration Bureau, a division of China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., a huge state-run oil company better known as Sinopec.
Xu Shuang, the general manager of Zhongyuan Petroleum Exploration Bureau, based in Addis Ababa, said nine of its Chinese oil workers were killed and seven Chinese workers kidnapped. It confirmed 65 Ethiopians also died.
The Zhongyuan official, whose company began working in Ethiopia’s volatile Somali Regional State last year, declined to give further details of the attack.
The assault took place early Tuesday morning in Abole, a small town 120 kilometres from the state’s capital Jijiga, close to the Somali border. Bereket said several Ethiopian troops were wounded in the gunbattle in the area, one of Ethiopia’s poorest with bad communications and roads.
“The army is pursuing them.” Bereket said. “We will track them down dead or alive. We will make sure these people will be hunted and be brought to justice.”
He said the group was also linked to the Eritrean government, which Ethiopia has repeatedly accused of waging terror attacks. Eritrea denies the allegations.
Both countries, which fought a border war that ended in 2000, are accused of backing rival sides in the Somali conflict.
China has increased its presence in Africa in recent years in a hunt for oil and other natural resources to feed its rapidly growing economy. Its forays into areas considered politically unstable, however, has exposed Chinese workers to attacks.
The Ogaden National Liberation Front issued a warning last year that any investment in the Ogaden area that also benefited the Ethiopian government “would not be tolerated.”
The Ogaden National Liberation Front has been waging a low-level insurgency with the aim of creating an independent state for ethnic Somalis. Somalia lost control of the region, the size of Britain and home to around four million people, in a war in 1977.
The rebel group also has been fighting Ethiopian troops inside Somalia, where Ethiopia troops led an offensive on behalf of the western-backed interim government that crushed an Islamic administration that had established wide control in Somalia.
China has increased its presence in Africa in recent years in a hunt for oil and other natural resources to feed its rapidly growing economy. Its forays into areas considered politically unstable, however, has exposed Chinese workers to attacks.
In Nigeria, armed militants seeking a greater share of that country’s oil wealth kidnapped nine Chinese oil workers in January, and two more in March. Two were still being held, though hostages are normally released unharmed in Nigeria, after a ransom is paid.
Also in March in Nigeria, five Chinese telecommunications workers were abducted for two weeks.
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