At least 60 people were killed in two separate attacks in Ethiopia’s conflict-hit Oromiya region in the past week, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church said on Monday 26 October 2026. The Holy Synod said all the victims were Christians. The Oromiya regional government and a rebel alliance fighting federal forces in Tigray have blamed each other, without evidence.
Ethiopia’s Orthodox Holy Synod said in a statement issued on Monday 26 October 2026 that 14 believers were killed in Merti Woreda on 20 October and 46 more in Sherka Woreda on 24 October, both districts in the Arsi Zone of Oromiya region, according to Ethiopian outlets that reported the statement.
More than 20 homes were burned and more than 20 people were hospitalised with severe injuries. The church said the dead were all Christians but gave no account of how they died or who carried out the killings.
Reuters reported that the Oromiya regional government and a source linked to a rebel alliance fighting government forces in the northern Tigray region traded blame within hours of each other. The regional government said the alliance carried out the attacks to provoke religious conflict, without providing evidence.
The source linked to the alliance attributed the killings to the Oromiya regional government, citing conversations with two residents — testimony that cannot be independently verified.
The Oromo Liberation Army, which the regional government has accused of earlier attacks on Orthodox Christians, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The OLA is one of seven armed groups that announced last month they had formed an alliance dedicated to overthrowing Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government.
Ethiopian and international reporting has named the coalition as the Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Alliance for Survival, announced on 20 September, and has listed members including Amhara Fano, the OLA and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front — formerly warring factions now united against Addis Ababa.
Three things are worth holding in view. First, the casualty figures come from a church body, not from a forensic or police investigation, and no independent confirmation has been published.
Second, the framing of the attacks as sectarian is itself contested: the government’s account is that the alliance engineered the killings to ignite religious tension, which, if accepted, reframes the victims as instrumental rather than the motive.
Third, the recurrence matters. Arsi Zone has featured repeatedly in church reports of attacks on Orthodox communities, and the pattern is now running alongside an open military confrontation on several fronts.
The risk is that Oromiya becomes the hinge of a wider war. A rebellion that can no longer be geographically contained, a government already stretched in Tigray and Amhara, and attacks that invite communal retaliation is a combination that has fragmented other conflicts in the region.
The church’s demand is modest by comparison: federal protection and legal accountability for those responsible. On the record available, neither the government nor the alliance has produced anything that would satisfy it.
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