"Ethiopia Arrests Opposition Members After Clashes"

Katie Nguyen

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) — Ethiopian security forces rounded up some opposition members on Thursday, a day after police and troops fired into crowds killing at least 26 people in an explosion of violence sparked by election protests.

The main opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD), which the government accused of inciting the protesters, said 14 members had been arrested since Wednesday's clashes, the worst bloodshed in the capital Addis Ababa in four years.

One CUD leader was also under house arrest, it said.

"Their aim is to destroy any meaningful opposition," CUD deputy chairman Berhanu Nega told Reuters.

With Addis Ababa residents still in shock over Wednesday's violence, troops patrolled deserted streets and most shops remained shut. Blue cabs that usually clog the capital's streets were nowhere to be seen on the second day of a taxi strike.The violence flared after weeks of opposition accusations that the ruling party intimidated voters and rigged the polls to hold on to power in the strategic Horn of Africa nation which the United States views as a key ally in its "war on terror."

The European Union condemned the government's tough line on the opposition. "The mission has conveyed to the government its condemnation of the house arrests and other harassment and threatening measures imposed on the opposition," EU chief election observer Ana Gomez said.

Ethiopia's Information Minister Bereket Simon would not confirm the 14 arrests. But he told Reuters: "Anyone who incites violence, other than those elected, will have to face the law."

Ethiopians searching for bodies of dead relatives trawled the capital's morgues on Thursday, while others held funerals.

At the main Menelik II Hospital morgue, workers with cotton wool in their noses laid out narrow wooden coffins with the victims' shoes, shirts and trousers laid neatly on top.

Fakedu Kibret said he had come for the body of his brother Berukie, gunned down as he was trying to enter his house.

"I'm deeply sad, not just for my brother but everyone who has died," Fakedu said, weeping and opening a coffin to show the blood-splattered body of his 34-year-old brother.

Later, hundreds gathered at a church to bury him and two others in the poor Mercato area of Addis Ababa where the violence exploded. "Fear reigns throughout Mercato and we don't know what will happen tomorrow," his widow Hiwot, 28, said, holding a black-and-white photo of her husband.

ECHOES OF THE PAST

Some older residents in Addis Ababa worry the country is on the verge of returning to its totalitarian past.

They say the protest crackdown is an eerie reminder of the coup that deposed Emperor Haile Selassie and brought Marxist dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam to power in 1974.

Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) has ruled since 1991, when his guerrilla army deposed Mengistu.

His government blamed the CUD for inciting crowds to loot shops, rob banks and attack police on Wednesday. But the CUD said the clashes, after two days of student protests in which one person was killed and hundreds arrested, were spontaneous.

A day after the shootings, red-bereted special forces rode in a convoy of armored vehicles through the empty streets of the capital, strewn with rocks and lined by shops with metal shutters clamped over their windows.

Less than a month ago, the same streets were overflowing with people voting in what diplomats described as Ethiopia's most democratic elections in its history.

But a month's delay in official election results until July 8, compounded by claims of victory by both sides and accusations of fraud, has ratcheted up the tension in Africa's top coffee grower since May's landmark polls.

Early results show the EPRDF and allies have won enough seats for a third five-year term to rule the nation of 72 million, sub-Saharan Africa's second most populous.

However, according to those results, the CUD has increased its share of parliamentary seats by nearly tenfold and made a clean sweep in Addis Ababa — surprising all observers.

It said on Thursday an Ethiopian court had upheld its appeal for the National Election Board to stop releasing provisional results until allegations of vote-rigging in 299 of the nation's 527 constituencies had been investigated.

An election board official confirmed the ruling but said it would be appealing to the Supreme Court.