More than 50,000 people have fled across the border into Kenya after deadly clashes erupted in Ethiopia over a long-standing territorial dispute. The violence is rooted in competing claims over land and administrative control between Ethiopia’s Oromia and Somali regional administrations. Tensions escalated around October 18 over the raising of the Somali regional flag in the disputed Moyale area.
Hawa Hassan fled her home in Ethiopia’s Moyale area after it was burned during the violence. She described seeing a 13-year-old girl shot while sitting near a wall. Her account of the killing could not be independently verified. Hassan said women gave birth while fleeing, and families arrived without food, cooking utensils, or bedding. Newborn babies were sleeping on bare floors while diarrhoea spread and families feared malaria.
A government-led assessment conducted on October 29 and 30 estimated that 35,950 people had been displaced as of October 24. Malik Adan, the Kenya Red Cross regional head, stated during a meeting that the total number had since increased to more than 50,000. This figure includes individuals in temporary settlements and those staying with relatives and host families. The overall number of displaced people has yet to be independently established.
Mwasaru Mercy, Kenya’s acting commissioner for refugee affairs, said a multi-agency government team was deployed to Moyale. Gunfire could still be heard, raising fears of further displacement. Mercy said there were no contingency food stocks specifically for the incident because it happened abruptly. Authorities are working with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to register arrivals and assess needs.
Fatima Mohammed Cole, the UNHCR representative in Kenya, said many arrivals were women and children. She stated that families were spread across several locations, including six sites hosting Ethiopians. Cole appealed for a ceasefire that would allow families to return home. The response is also under way inside Ethiopia, where the Ethiopian Red Cross Society provided emergency shelter and household items worth about 30 million Ethiopian birr to 1,000 households.
Kenyan communities near the border are feeling the strain of the influx. Abdi Maalim, a member of the Moyale Cross-Border Peace Committee, said families that once cooked for five or six people were now feeding 20 or 30. Some Kenyan families moved further inland after bullets and heavy weapons landed close to their homes. Maalim also said that trucks carrying goods between Mombasa and Addis Ababa had been stranded near the border for almost two weeks.
Security analyst Dr Abdiwahab Sheikh Abdisamad stated that the clashes had grown beyond a local dispute, exposing deeper ethnic divisions and political competition between Ethiopia’s regional administrations. He warned that armed fighters crossing the border and stray bullets made the situation a Kenyan security concern as well as a refugee emergency. Kenya’s Inspector General of Police, Douglas Kanja, visited Moyale on November 5 and announced that additional officers would be deployed along the border to strengthen security. Kanja confirmed that Kenya was engaging Ethiopia’s federal government to help end the conflict, adding that one Kenyan had died after being hit by a stray bullet while an Ethiopian man had died from gunshot wounds sustained in Kenya.
