Ethiopia blamed its longtime enemy Eritrea Wednesday for an attack in eastern Ethiopia on a Chinese-owned oil exploration field that killed 74 people. Eritrea issued a swift, angry denial.
In addition to those killed, at least six Chinese workers and a number of Ethiopians were taken hostage during Tuesday's dawn attack, for which the rebel Ogaden National Liberation Front claimed responsibility. The secessionist group formed from Ethiopia's minority Somalis has been linked to neighboring Eritrea.
"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," Ethiopia's Foreign Ministry stated on its Web site Wednesday.
It called on the
United Nations to take action against Eritrea.
Eritrean Information Minister Ali Abdu denied the allegation, saying it was "a habitual nonsense statement" from Ethiopia.
Relations between Ethiopia and Eritrea have been strained since Eritrea gained independence from the Addis Ababa government in 1993 following a 30-year guerrilla war. The two countries fought a two-year border war that ended in 2000.
Recently, the two nations have traded accusations over involvement in Somalia. Eritrea is accused of backing an increasingly violent Islamic insurgency fighting Ethiopian troops supporting the Somali government.
Tuesday's attackers "were wearing Eritrean military uniforms," Abdullahi Hassan, president of the region in Ethiopia where the attack occurred, told The Associated Press. "We are sure. They were speaking the Eritrean language."
Hassan said the area of the attack is now under control. The attack took place early Tuesday in Abole, a small town 310 miles east of Addis Ababa in Somali Regional State and close to the Somali border.
Xu Shuang, the general manager of Zhongyuan Petroleum Exploration Bureau's Ethiopia operation, said nine Chinese oil workers and 65 locals were killed and that seven Chinese workers were kidnapped. But the group said it is only holding six Chinese workers.
China condemned the attack, the first against a foreign company in the Horn of Africa nation.
The bodies of the nine slain Chinese workers were being flown to the Ethiopian capital on Wednesday, before being repatriated to China, said Sun Qing, a Chinese embassy spokeswoman. She said negotiations were under way to win the release of the hostages and that all Chinese staff were being evacuated. She had no detail on whether the attackers were wearing Eritrean uniforms.
Ethiopian troops continued their search Wednesday for the rebel group and the hostages.
Tuesday's attack by more than 200 fighters lasted about an hour, and followed a warning the rebel group made last year against any investment in eastern Ethiopia's Ogaden area. The group said in a second statement posted on its Web site that 400 Ethiopian troops were killed or wounded in the attack. It said the Chinese fatalities were caused by explosions caused by munitions during the battle.
The statement added that the oil exploration field was attacked because ethnic Somalis were driven from their land by Ethiopian troops to make way for the facility.
In recent years, the Ogaden National Liberation Front has only made occasional hit-and-run attacks against government troops, making Tuesday's attack its most significant one. It has fought for the secession of the Ogaden region — an area the size of Britain with 4 million people — since the early 1990s.
The volatile Somali Regional State, as the Ogaden is known, "is not a safe environment for any oil exploration to occur. We urge all international oil companies to refrain from entering into agreements with the Ethiopian government," the front said in its claim of responsibility sent to the AP.
The Ogaden National Liberation Front described Tuesday's attack as "military operations against units of the Ethiopian armed forces guarding an oil exploration site," in the east of the country.
It did not give any details of casualties, but said they had "wiped out" three Ethiopian military units.
The official Xinhua news agency reported that the attackers fought 100 Ethiopian soldiers protecting the facility in a 50-minute gunbattle.
Ethiopia is not an oil-producing country. But companies such as the Chinese one and Malaysia's state-owned oil giant Petronas have signed exploration deals.
Xinhua said Zhongyuan Petroleum Exploration Bureau had 157 Chinese and Ethiopian workers at the facility. The company is a division of the giant state-owned China Petroleum and Chemical Corp. that began its operations in Ethiopia in May 2004, according to its Web site. It began work in the volatile Somali Regional State last year.
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