‘Finish us off’: Ethiopia’s Qemant say targeted in armed campaign

Government officials maintain focus of operations in region is suspected rebels and not civilians.

Amare says he had two options.

“It was either leave home or be killed,” he told Al Jazeera from the safety of a United Nations-run refugee camp in the Basinga village in Sudan’s Gadarif state bordering Ethiopia.

The 20-year-old student, a member of Ethiopia’s Qemant minority ethnic group, fled to the camp to escape what he says was a raid by Ethiopian soldiers on Shinfa, a town in Ethiopia’s Amhara region some 10km (six miles) from the Sudanese border, on June 13.