Armed men killed at least 43 people in attacks on Orthodox Christian communities in Ethiopia’s Shirka district that began Saturday and ran into Sunday morning, and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church puts the toll above 60.
The reports we read cite the Ethiopian Human Rights Council’s area-wide total for the past five years but not the district’s own figure, and that figure is the one that matters. The council counted 116 deaths in Shirka between September 2021 and June 2026, so the lowest count for this one weekend already equals 37 percent of it.
Six Counts of One Night
If you are trying to work out how many people died, these are the figures published on Monday and who stands behind each. We pulled them from AFP’s report, Addis Standard’s report and the BBC’s, and none of them is an official count.
| Who | Count | What they described |
|---|---|---|
| ACLED conflict monitor, to AFP | At least 43 killed, 18 wounded | An unidentified armed group; clashes with local militias through Saturday afternoon and evening |
| A resident, to AFP | 44 killed | Sister and uncle killed, relatives taken hostage in Chole |
| A church deacon, to AFP | 46 killed | Some locals sheltering in nearby churches |
| Residents at the mass funeral, to Addis Standard | At least 48 killed, more than 31 wounded | Chole and Birbo kebeles, Saturday evening into Sunday morning |
| A second resident, to AFP | 51 killed | No detail given |
| Ethiopian Orthodox Church, to the BBC | More than 60 killed | A series of attacks in three areas of Shirka; 20 houses burned |
| Oromia regional government | No figure given | A brief remark to state media blaming an armed group |
The spread may partly be geography. The church describes attacks in three areas of Shirka, while the residents who spoke to Addis Standard describe two localities, Chole and Birbo. Neither report says whether that accounts for the gap, so we will not claim it does.
The count of children is unsettled too. Eyewitnesses told BBC Amharic that five of the dead were children, and Addis Standard’s residents counted at least six under 15.
Six Hours, Door to Door
Residents describe a slow, close-range killing. “Armed men were going door to door shooting and stabbing civilians,” one told Addis Standard, saying neighborhood watches were overwhelmed by attackers with AK-47s over nearly six hours.
The first 35 to 37 victims went into a mass grave on Sunday, those residents said, while burials continued and the wounded were split between hospitals in Gobesa and Shirka and clinics as far away as Chanco. A church in Digelu town was looted.
The accounts of the security response differ. A church official told the BBC that security forces reached the scene and could not stop the assault, and a resident told Addis Standard the attackers pulled back only when the federal army deployed on Sunday evening. The state-run Ethiopia Human Rights Commission told AFP only that it was “following the situation.”
AFP adds that verifying anything in Ethiopia is highly challenging because of heavy restrictions on media access. That is why the table above is a range and not a verdict.
One Night Against Five Years of Records
The council’s 158th special report covers September 2021 to June 2026 and puts Shirka’s toll at 116, second among nine East Arsi districts behind Merti’s 117, according to Borkena’s summary of it. We could not open the report itself, because the council’s website returned a server error when we tried, so those district figures are as Borkena relays them.
Here is the arithmetic. Forty-three is 37 percent of 116, 48 is 41 percent, and 60 is 52 percent. Added to the council’s count, even the lowest figure would lift Shirka’s total from 116 to at least 159.
Spread over the 58 months the report covers, 116 deaths averages two a month. At that rate, 43 deaths is about 21 months of killing, and 60 is 30.
The average flatters the past, because the killing comes in bursts. Residents said in late 2023 that 36 people were killed in two attacks in Shirka, and a Synod statement dated March 1 counted 21 civilians killed there this year. Even the lowest figure for this weekend is larger than either.
Nobody Has Been Named, Only Blamed
No group has been shown to have carried this out. AFP says it was not clear whether the main insurgent group in the state was involved.
A local official told the BBC the Alliance for Survival, a newly formed rebel coalition that includes the Oromo Liberation Army, was behind it. The OLA has not commented on this attack and has denied carrying out earlier ones.
Oromia’s communication bureau head, Hailu Adugna, gave state media a brief remark blaming a group he called Tsimdo, which he said was trying to “divert the government’s attention and expand internal conflict.” He gave no toll and no account of what security forces did. The BBC and Addis Standard use different names, and neither says whether they mean the same group.
The Letter Written a Day Before
The person to follow through this story is not a commander or a spokesman. A resident told Addis Standard that people in the nearby town of Sire prepared a letter on Friday asking the town administration for protection, and that the appeal was “not received in time.” The same resident said, “No one is interested to take us seriously.”
That resident also described rumors in nearby towns, two days before the attack, alleging that “Tsimdo members” were using churches to organize, and said local police supported the militias. Addis Standard says it could not verify the rumors, the attackers’ affiliation or the role of local security forces, and we found no second source for any of it. It is one resident’s account, and we are reporting it as that.
The church’s own record points the same way. In a Facebook statement, it said it had repeatedly raised concerns about insecurity with authorities at different levels of government, and that “so far there has been no solution.”
Not a Religious War, and Not a Rebel Alibi
We think two easy readings of this are already forming, and the record supports neither.
The first calls it a Christian-Muslim war. After the February killings in Shirka, the Ethiopian Islamic Affairs Supreme Council condemned the deaths of Orthodox Christian civilians and said the act does not represent any religion, and the Inter-Religious Council of Ethiopia called the attack “irreligious, inhuman, and horrific.” AFP does report that religion has been used to mobilize fighters, and the BBC notes that earlier reporting also documented attacks on Muslims in the area. That describes how armed groups recruit. It does not describe two faiths at war.
The second reading is the government’s: name a rebel group, promise action, move on. We think that is the real failure here. Officials blamed “OLF/Shene” after earlier attacks and a group called Tsimdo after this one, and the regional government told the BBC it would take action against those responsible. An attribution is not protection. A district where a rights council had documented 116 deaths, where a Synod had counted 21 more this year, and where people in a nearby town wrote down a request for protection the day before, was not protected on Saturday.
The number to watch is not a seventh count. It is whether anyone with a mandate publishes one. The regional government has given none, and the state-run rights commission says it is following the situation. The council that counted 116 published the names of its dead in July, and its next report will show how many of this weekend’s victims it can name. Until then the church’s figure and the monitor’s figure are all there is, and the 17-person gap between them is the measure of how little anyone in authority has said.