At least 23 people were killed and 150 wounded in clashes in the Ethiopian capital today, medical sources said, as police battled protesters in the giant African country's worst political unrest in months.
The killings occurred when security forces opened fire to scatter hundreds of demonstrators who formed makeshift barricades, hurled rocks and smashed windscreens in protest against a May poll the opposition says was rigged.
The government said two police officers were killed and 54 other officers wounded in the violence, which follows months of serious tensions between the government and opposition in sub-Saharan Africa's second most populous nation.
Information Minister Berhanu Hailu said only 11 protesters were killed, calling higher figures exaggerated, and said "hooligan" opposition figures were behind the unrest in the city, a bastion of opposition to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. Special forces backed by armoured personnel carriers were deployed in the volatile Mercato area, where violence erupted on Tuesday, and sealed it off from the rest of the sprawling city.
The sources, contacted at five city hospitals, said women and youths were among those killed on Wednesday. The violence, the second straight day of unrest in the capital, brings to at least 31 the number killed in the past two days.
Many of the wounded had been shot in the upper body, the medical sources said.
A Reuters reporter saw police round up dozens of people and bundle them into two pickup trucks. "We are protesting because the government stole the election. People are angry because the police are very cruel," said Ghebremichael Ayele, dragging pieces of wood to block a road leading to the capital's biggest hospital.