Deaths reported in raid on western village

At least two people were killed and an unknown number of others displaced when cattle rustlers, allegedly from Sudan, attacked villages in western Ethiopia, according to the Ethiopian defence ministry and aid workers. "About 450 Sudanese Nuer [ethnic group] crossed the border on 16 April, looted cattle from Ethiopians and shot two Ethiopian Nuer," defence ministry spokesman Dawit Assefa told IRIN on Wednesday. "They took about 281 cattle and 31 goats," he said. Aid workers reached by telephone in Gambella confirmed the incident, which happened on the weekend of 15 April, but said 16 people had died in the raid, nine were wounded and several others were displaced. "Members of the Nuer tribe from Sudan came in overnight on Friday at 1 o'clock a.m. They killed 16 Ethiopian Nuer, among them women and children," reported a humanitarian official from Gambella town, about 88 km east of the border town of Jikaw and 800 km west of Addis Ababa. "They shot them and seized their cattle," said the aid worker, who asked not to be named. Herder communities in border areas in southern and western Ethiopia frequently attack each other's villages to steal livestock, but the raids have become increasingly violent, as herdsmen have illegally acquired firearms, despite the Ethiopian government’s efforts to disarm some of them. The clashes have been exacerbated by the drought, which has also been blamed for similar deadly violence along on the Kenya-Ethiopia border. "These incidents are usual in the border areas of the country. It is the people who are fighting for food, not the countries," said Dawit.