Ethiopians cross into Kenya as fighting disrupts Moyale
Kenyan police said hundreds, mostly women and children, fled through Moyale as the Kenya Red Cross began an emergency response.
By James Whitfield · Staff Writer
2 min read
Hundreds of Ethiopians crossed into Kenya through the border town of Moyale as fighting and tensions disrupted the area, Kenyan police said on October 22. Most of those arriving were women and children, and the Kenya Red Cross said it was preparing shelter and food assistance while it assessed needs.
Police said people entered Kenya through the Sessi, Kore, Biashara, Foundation and Miti areas of Moyale. The available reporting does not give a precise number of arrivals, and the police account has not been independently corroborated in the material available.
Why are Ethiopians crossing into Kenya at Moyale?
Kenyan police linked the displacement to tensions between leaders of Ethiopia's Oromia and Somali regional states. Police reported gunfire and chaotic conditions in Moyale, according to Al Jazeera's report.
Ethiopian media, as cited in that report, said the confrontation began on Sunday after a dispute over the public raising of the Somali Regional State flag. The account said tensions then grew into fighting between forces from the Oromia and Somali regions. No official Ethiopian account, casualty figure or independently verified explanation for the reported trigger was included in the available material.
The Somali Regional State is one of Ethiopia's regional states and lies in the east of the country. Oromia is another Ethiopian regional state. The reported movement took place around Moyale, a town on the Kenya-Ethiopia frontier.
What assistance is being provided?
The Kenya Red Cross said it was setting up temporary shelter and distributing cereal and porridge flour. Its initial response was intended to reach 1,000 households, the organization said, while specialists determined how many people were affected and what support they required.
The household target is an initial aid plan, rather than a confirmed count of people who crossed the border. The Kenya Red Cross said its assessment was still under way.
The Moyale incident is separate from fighting in Ethiopia's northern Tigray region. In August, AFP reporting carried by RFI and Arab News described a different movement in which hundreds of people fled from Tigray into Sudan after clashes near that border; those reports said some accounts of the fighting could not be independently verified.
Al Jazeera's October 22 report also distinguished the Moyale violence from the conflict in Tigray. A Yahoo republication repeated the same Moyale account, but it does not provide separate confirmation of the police or aid-agency statements.
This story draws on original reporting from Al Jazeera.