Grenade Attack Kills One

Assailants hurled a hand grenade at students of Addis Ababa University watching a TV programme at their dormitory building the previous Thursday evening. One student was killed and three others sustained injuries.

According to Professor Andreas Eshete, President of Addis Ababa University, the hand grenade attack targeting students at the Sidist Kilo Campus was an attempt to trigger violence by sowing the seeds of discord among the students.

The Federal Police Commission told ENA that the police had launched a manhunt to apprehend those responsible for the grenade attack.

Professor Andras told journalists on Sunday that the grenade thrown at students watching TV programme was a shameful act as it was premeditated and planned.

He said that the university students had the right to learn peacefully, to assemble and express their opinions freely. He added that any grievance can be solved through dialogue.

According to the police, the Orumo Liberation Front (OLF) might have been behind the horrendous act.

Meanwhile, the Addis Ababa University Students Union strongly denounced the brutal attack targeting innocent students at the Sidist Kilo Campus.

Meanwhile, Ethnic Oromo youths who fled to Kenya from Ethiopia alleging they were the target of government intimidation have begun returning home.

This follows a UN refugee agency assurance on Tuesday that they would be protected and readmitted to school.

"The students have started to return home after the Ethiopian government assured us that nothing will happen to them and that they will be readmitted into their former schools," said UN High Commissioner for Refugees UNHCR) spokesperson Emmanuel Nyabera.

"About 108 students returned voluntarily following those assurances, but we have moved those who have not decided to return to a temporary holding camp outside a police station in the Kenyan-Ethiopian border town of Moyale," Nyabera added.

He explained that "the return of the remaining students is voluntary, but in the event that they don't, then the UNHCR will start screening them with a view to transferring them to permanent camps".

He said 407 Oromo students were still in Kenya.

The students, who started arriving in Moyale in Kenya on March 19, were from a secondary school in Moyale, a town on the Ethiopian side of the border.

They complained that government agents had been harrassing them because of their ethnicity.

The Ethiopian government is fighting the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), a separatist rebel group active in the south of the country.

In another development a bomb exploded in Bishoftu town, east of Addis Ababa, this week killing one person and injuring others, it was learnt.