Grief returned to rural Oromia on Thursday after gunmen struck an Orthodox Christian community in Endato—also written Endeto—inside Robe district. Local tallies put the dead at thirty-four or more, pushing the cumulative toll from recent assaults on worshippers above ninety within roughly three weeks.
Two October massacres in Merti and Shirka had already left church officials counting sixty-plus victims. The Holy Synod answered days later with a public condemnation and a plea for guards around congregations. Ethiopia’s human-rights watchdog later blamed the Oromo Liberation Army for those autumn raids, and police detained close to seventy people afterward.
Fresh reporting describes smashed storefronts, damaged homes and officers drawn into the fighting, with additional residents wounded. Numbering well over thirty million, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church ranks among the nation’s largest faith bodies—and among its most anxious after this latest bloodshed.
Clergy and aid groups say Oromia’s long conflict is again swallowing civilians at prayer. They want proof that prior arrests mean lasting protection rather than a pause before the next funeral cortege.
For Endato’s families the arithmetic is grim and immediate: dozens dead overnight, unanswered questions about who gave orders, and a nationwide count that has nearly hit three figures before November is halfway done.
