INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
The attack was an "attempt by forces who do not want to see Ethiopia united", the Prime Minister said.ADDIS ABABA:
Ethiopia's new Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed escaped a grenade attack on Saturday at a rally in the capital that killed one person and left
scores wounded, officials and witnesses said.The attack was launched by an unidentified assailant moments after 41-year-old prime minister,
a former soldier who took office in April, finished his speech to tens of thousands of people gathered in the centre of Addis Ababa.A
witness saw Abiy whisked away by guards. Health Minister Amir Aman said one person was killed and 154 were wounded, with 10 of them in
critical condition.Addressing the nation on television shortly after the blast and still wearing a green t-shirt he was handed at the rally,
Abiy said the attack was an "attempt by forces who do not want to see Ethiopia united."Abiy had promised the crowd in his speech in Addis
Ababa's Meskel Square that he would bring more transparency to government and reconciliation to a nation of 100 million people that has been
torn by protests since 2015.The assailant with the grenade had been wrestled to the ground by police before it exploded
(AFP)Eritrea, which has long been at loggerheads with Ethiopia over a border row that Abiy has sought to resolve, condemned the incident, as
did the European Union and the United States.Abiy took office after his predecessor, Hailemariam Desalegn, resigned in February following
protests in which hundreds of people were killed between 2015 and 2017.Despite boasting one of Africa's fastest growing economies, opponents
say the benefits have not been shared fairly between ethnic groups and regions in the country, which has been run by the same ruling
coalition for more than quarter of a century.Abiy has travelled around the nation, promising to address grievances and address political and
civil rights.After Saturday's blast, the prime minister's chief of staff wrote on Twitter: "Some whose heart is filled with hate attempted a
grenade attack.""All the casualties are martyrs of love peace
HE PM sends his condolences to the victims
The perpetrators will be brought to justice," Fitsum Arega wrote.The U.S
embassy in Addis Ababa said: "Violence has no place as Ethiopia pursues meaningful political and economic reforms."Peace Initiative Rally
organiser Seyoum Teshome told Reuters he saw five people injured in the blast
Someone tried to hurl it to the stage where the prime minister was," Seyoum said.As well as promising economic reforms, Abiy stunned
Ethiopians this month by saying he was ready to fully implement a peace deal with Eritrea that was signed in 2000 after a two-year war
For years, Ethiopia refused to implement the deal, saying it wanted more talks.Emergency law was temporarily imposed to quell the unrest and
was lifted this month.The stalemate led to a military build up and sporadic clashes on the border between Ethiopia and Eritrea, which
seceded from Ethiopia in 1991 after a long war of independence.Under the 2000 peace deal, Ethiopia is required to cede the border town of
But war veterans in Badme and ethnic Tigrayans along the border oppose the peace initiative, with some town residents saying they will not
leave the town.Eritrea's ambassador to Japan, Estifanos Afeworki, wrote on Twitter that his nation "strongly condemns the attempt to incite
violence" in Addis Ababa, calling the rally a "demonstration for peace".Ethiopia's ruling EPRDF is made up of parties representing the
country's four major ethnic groups
Abiy hails from the Oromo ethnic group, making up roughly a third of the population.Oromos, along with the Amhara ethnic group, led street
demonstrations against the government since 2015 that began as protests against a development plan around the capital and which opponents
said the state was using to grab land
Protests broadened to cover other political and economic demands.In another of Abiy's major policy shifts, the prime minister has said
Ethiopia would open its state-run telecoms monopoly and state-owned Ethiopian Airlines to private domestic and foreign investment, both
moves would loosen the state's grip.© Thomson Reuters 2018(This story has not been edited by TheIndianSubcontinent staff and is
auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
