Drone Strike on a Dera School Killed at Least Six Children, Addis Standard Reports, as a Fano Movement Statement Lists More Strikes on Civilians Across Amhara

Drone Strike on a Dera School Killed at Least Six Children, Addis Standard Reports, as a Fano Movement Statement Lists More Strikes on Civilians Across Amhara

October 23, 2026

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Debre Tabor, capital of the South Gondar zone, where Dera woreda lies, in 2011. [file photo] [Wikimedia Commons, Brian Dell, CC0]

A drone strike on Sana Elementary School in Dera woreda, South Gondar, on Tuesday morning killed at least six schoolchildren and wounded more than 20, according to preliminary reports cited by Addis Standard, which spoke to a teacher who said there were no armed men in the school or anywhere near it.

The strike came between 10 and 11 a.m. on Oct. 20 in Sana kebele, Addis Standard reported, and the wounded children were taken to a local clinic, where their condition was not immediately known. The outlet said the death toll was still uncertain. Other accounts circulating publicly put the number of students killed at between seven and 10 and the number wounded at more than 25, and Addis Standard said it could not independently verify the total. DW Amharic had reported eyewitness accounts of the strike on Wednesday without giving a casualty figure, as Zegabi reported at the time.

The teacher rejected claims on social media that the drone had been aimed at a nearby hideout used by Fano forces. “This was a school with more than 150 students attending the morning shift; there was no armed people in the school or nearby,” the teacher told Addis Standard. “There was not conflict in nearby areas. Many of our students came back to school after three- or two-years interruptions. We don’t know why the school was targeted.” The teacher said more than 20 students had been wounded and parts of two classrooms damaged, and that the full extent of the damage had not yet been assessed.

A mother whom Addis Standard called Alemtshay, a name it changed for her safety, said her 11-year-old son, Dagim, had stayed home that morning with a fever and a bad cold, even though she had pushed him to go because he had already missed two years of school to the war. She said she heard screams in the neighborhood at about 10:30 a.m., during the school’s tea break, before families began carrying their injured children to the clinic. “It was a complete chaos; mothers were crying and wailing,” she said. “When we heard there was a bomb dropped from a helicopter, some men started to go around shouting for people to not leave their houses because they were afraid there might be another attack.” Alemtshay said she had been unhappy that her son missed school that day, “but now, I know God was protecting him.”

Addis Standard said it could not establish the circumstances of the strike or its intended target, and could not get a response from the Ethiopian military. By 9:45 a.m. ET on Friday, Zegabi had found no comment on the strike from the Ethiopian Gov’t, and no mention of it on the X accounts of the Government Communication Service, EBC or Fana.

The Amhara Fano National Movement (AFNM) said in a statement dated Oct. 22 that the strike killed more than 15 students who were in class, and that the school’s guard, Eshete Kebede, who it said is 60, was badly wounded. The statement, issued by the movement’s public relations department, was carried by Zegabi’s X account and posted in Amharic and English by the AFNM’s foreign affairs account. It blamed the federal government for a series of drone and heavy weapons strikes on civilians over several days. It said a strike on a tea shop in Basso Liben woreda, East Gojjam, on Oct. 21 killed five people it named, and that a drone strike on Oct. 20 in Densa, a town in the Mehal Sayint woreda of South Wollo, killed guards of Amhara Bank and Bank of Abyssinia and two students, one of them Kalkidan Fisseha, who it said had finished 12th grade this year, and wounded others, among them an 8-year-old boy. In Shewa, it said drones, rockets, BM rocket launchers, mortars and ZU-23 guns hit the Furra and Sichat kebeles of Bulga on Oct. 21, killing four people, including a 3-year-old girl it named as Mita Endale. It also said a jet strike in the Awi zone on Oct. 20 destroyed several villages, and that in Gida Ayana woreda of East Wollega, six small towns had been burned and more than 65,000 Amhara residents were living in the forest. The movement called on the United Nations, the European Union and human rights groups to have an independent body investigate. None of the AFNM’s figures or names could be verified, and the Ethiopian National Defense Force has not commented on them.

The same Tuesday, in Tigray, a drone strike at about 9 p.m. in Finaruo village, Saharti Samre woreda, in the Southeastern zone, killed four people as they loaded livestock onto an Isuzu truck, residents told Addis Standard. They said the dead were the owner of the animals and three people helping him, and one resident said, “What is most distressing is that the three of them were close relatives who were helping the owner.” Six people were wounded, three of them taken to Samre Hospital and three, badly hurt, to Ayder Comprehensive Specialized Hospital in Mekelle, the residents said, and some of the wounded were between 13 and 17 years old. A resident said there had been no movement of federal or Tigrayan forces in the area in the days before the strike.

Federal forces have been fighting Fano in Amhara since 2023, and Addis Standard said drone strikes had become a recurring part of that war, hitting homes, health centers and religious sites. In July, a drone strike on Saint Kirikos Monastery drew condemnation from the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and the World Council of Churches, the outlet recalled.

On X, figures for the Dera strike kept changing, and none was tied to a named source. An account posting as Ethiopian.Defenders (@ETHDefenders) wrote early on Thursday that “at least 27 children have reportedly been killed,” while an account posting as Betegbar (@Freedom44225) wrote on Friday morning that “10+ children” were “reportedly killed” and called for “urgent independent investigation.” A statement in Amharic in the name of a group calling itself the Addis Ababa Media Council, posted on Wednesday by the account Babysho (@Babysho16), said the strike came at 4:45 in the morning by the Ethiopian clock and hit “እድሜያቸው ከ 5-15 የሚሆኑ ታዳጊ ህጻናት ያሉበት ትምህርት ቤት” (“a school with young children aged 5 to 15”), and called it a war crime. Writing in Tigrigna on Wednesday about the Samre strike, kbrom (@KbromKbromywf), whose bio reads “newspaper publication,” said that in a drone strike at midnight in “ዕሸል ከተማ ፊናርዋ” (“the small town of Finarwa”), “4 ሰባት እንትሞቱ 6 ድማ ተጎዲኦም ሆስፒታል ኣትዮም” (“4 people died and 6 were hurt and taken to hospital”), and that the victims were “ንፅሃን መናእሰይ” (“innocent young people”). Translations from Amharic and Tigrigna are Zegabi’s. Zegabi has not verified the claims made in these posts.

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