Security Forces Detained People Who Rescued and Buried the Dead After the Shirka Massacre in Arsi, Residents Tell BBC and Wazema

October 30, 2026

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Since the night armed men killed dozens of people in Arsi’s Shirka woreda on Oct. 24, security forces have been detaining residents who had answered calls for help, carried away the wounded and buried the dead, and more than 20 of them have been held, five residents and other sources told BBC Amharic.

In Gobesa, the main town of the woreda, which now falls under the new Southeast Oromia zone, residents said 27 people, including women carrying small children, had been detained since the night of the attack and that many more were being sought. Church sources told the BBC that about 24 people, women among them, were held after the attack, that some were freed after several days and that 13 were still in custody. Residents said none of them had been brought before a court. The people who spoke to the BBC asked not to be named because they feared arrest.

“The ones detained are our brothers whom we called to come and bury their murdered mothers and fathers, to carry away the bodies, to help us. A woman who came to bury her father, her mother, her brother, these are the ones who were detained,” one resident told the BBC in Amharic. He said security forces surrounded homes from the night of the attack and on the next day “rounded up everyone and took them in.” Another resident, who said five members of his family including his sister were killed, told the BBC he was in hiding because he had been told he was being sought, and could not receive mourners in the customary way.

A church source told the BBC the detainees were accused of having “given information to the armed men,” an accusation he called implausible. Other residents said they were told, “The people who were killed are Fano, and you are Fano supporters and organizers.” Every resident and church source the BBC spoke to rejected that, saying those held were local people who had moved to town for work and relatives who came to bury their families.

Wazema Radio gave a higher number on Thursday, saying residents told it security forces had detained 43 people. Since Tuesday, residents said, security forces had been searching house to house and confiscating mobile phones, and people sitting in mourning or traveling to funerals were among those held, on the grounds that they had passed information to armed groups operating in the area. A senior official of the Southeast Oromia zone told Wazema that a team including regional officials had gone to the area two days earlier to look into the situation, and Wazema said its repeated attempts to reach senior regional officials failed. On Friday, residents and relatives of the victims told DW Amharic that local administrators had detained people who buried the dead and took the wounded to clinics “for no reason at all,” and that the arrests had caused strong anger in the area. The BBC said its calls and text messages to woreda and zone officials went unanswered.

The Oromia regional government has not commented on the detentions. Its communication bureau head, Hailu Adugna, earlier blamed the killings on a force that calls itself “Tsimdo” and said it had tried to stir ethnic and religious conflict but failed, DW noted. The Holy Synod of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church has said 60 faithful were killed in the Shirka and Merti attacks, as Zegabi reported, including 46 in Shirka’s Chole area on Oct. 24 and 14 in Merti on Oct. 20, according to Borkena. Mahibere Kidusan, the Orthodox church association, wrote to the federal and regional governments on Thursday asking for a free, independent investigation that includes the victims, and said the attacks keep recurring because those who carry them out and their collaborators are never identified and brought to justice, Wazema reported.

The killings have drawn attention abroad. The House Foreign Affairs Committee’s majority said on X on Oct. 27 that “the continued targeted attacks against Christians in Ethiopia are completely unacceptable” and that all parties should ensure “that the perpetrators are punished,” in a post that came before the detention reports. On Thursday the Alliance for Survival, the armed and political coalition that has vowed to remove the federal government in Addis Ababa by force, accused the government of “direct and indirect” involvement in the killings in Wollega and Arsi, DW Amharic reported. DW said the government had given no direct response to the alliance.

On X, several accounts posted much larger numbers that Zegabi could not confirm. The account Ethiopian.Defenders (@ETHDefenders) wrote that “100+ ppl have reportedly been arrested, according to residents,” that security forces were “confiscating phones & detaining even mourners & ppl traveling to attend funerals,” and that their alleged crime was “sharing info with foreign media.” Sosna (@Emuye06), whose bio carries the #EOTC tag of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, wrote, “Mourning is now a crime in Ethiopia’s Arsi Oromia region,” and said more than 100 family members had been arrested “simply for burying massacre victims and wearing black.” The account ASHEWEGOGO (@AmharaHQ) wrote that the government had “arrested 100+ for burying them and the doctors treating the injured” and called it “a cover-up.” None of the outlets that spoke to residents reported more than 43 detentions or any arrests of doctors. BBC Tigrinya carried the BBC’s report on the arrests in Tigrigna.

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