Reuters
May 25, 2002

''Between 12 to 15 people were killed in a clash between the rioters and security forces who were attempting to defend the security of the people and their property,'' Bereket said. ''A few others were injured.''
''The security forces were forced to fire after all effort to disperse the people who are trying to force their way into Awasa town failed,'' he added.

But a member of the Ethiopian Federal Parliament who comes from the affected southern region said up to 200 demonstrators may have been killed in the Friday shooting.

''I have information from the region that up to 200 demonstrators may have been killed in a volley of automatic gunfire from police,'' Beyene Petros told Reuters by telephone in the capital Addis Ababa.
Beyene said hospital sources in Awasa and the adjacent town of Yirgalem told him the bodies of 20 people killed in the shooting were lying in mortuaries.

He said Awasa town had been put under a dusk to dawn curfew from Friday and people were not venturing into the streets.

Media reports quoted some local sources as saying 60 people were killed when the army opened fire on about 3,000 peasants from rural areas around Awasa who were demanding ''their basic human rights.''
But Bereket said the media reports were exaggerated.

Awasa, located 250 km (150 miles) south of the capital Addis Ababa, is the capital of the Southern Nations and Nationality state, one of the country's nine federal regions.

It is administered by representatives of the local ethnic group, the Sidama. Plans by Ethiopia's central government to shift control of the town to the regional government have angered the Sidama people living in and around Awasa.

''Those opposed to the decision of the regional administration organised jobless youth and hooligans to go on the rampage throughout the town,'' Bereket said.

The Awasa killings were the worst since the police killed 39 students and wounded about 250 others during university riots in Addis Ababa in April of last year.

Those killings sparked an outcry but police said they had opened fire when the protests degenerated as thousands of jobless youths joined in, hurling stones at state-owned buildings, torching cars and looting shops to protest over academic and political rights.