Raid on Ethiopia facility kills 74

Ethiopian rebels stormed a Chinese-run oil exploration field near the Somalian border at dawn Tuesday, killing 74 people and destroying the facility.

Chinese officials said nine Chinese oil workers and 65 Ethiopians died and seven Chinese were taken away by the rebels. It wasn’t known whether the rebels suffered any casualties.

The assault by more than 200 gunmen, which lasted nearly an hour, followed a warning last year from the Ogaden National Liberation Front against any investment in eastern Ethiopia’s Ogaden region that could benefit the U.S.-allied government.

Formed by Somalis, an ethnic minority in Ethiopia, the group has been fighting for secession of the region, with 4 million inhabitants, since the early 1990s, but recently had mounted only occasional hit-and-run attacks on government troops.

The large scale of the attack at the small town of Abole raised the prospect of a broadening of the fighting in Somalia, where the Ethiopian army is supporting the U.N.-backed interim Somalian government in a war with Islamist insurgents.

J. Stephen Morrison, director of the Africa program for the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the Ogaden rebels were a “convenient vehicle for those who want to destabilize Ethiopia.” He said Somalia’s Islamists and the government of Eritrea, a bitter foe of Ethiopia, could be backers.

Princeton Lyman, an Africa analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations, urged caution in assigning blame. He said it was possible the Eritreans would encourage such attacks, but it also was possible that the Ogaden rebels were emboldened by the fighting in Somalia. The Ogaden rebels have fought on behalf of the Somalian insurgents.

Eritreans gained independence from Ethiopia in 1993 after a bloody three-decade rebellion, and the two nations fought a 2 1/2 -year war over their disputed border that ended in 2000.

Eritrea also is thought to be providing aid to the insurgents fighting Somalia’s interim government, which was supported by Ethiopian troops in defeating the hard-line Islamic Courts Union militia in December.

Ethiopia is not an oil-producing country, but companies such as China’s Zhongyuan Petroleum Exploration Bureau, whose facility was attacked, and Malaysia’s state-owned oil giant Petronas have signed exploration deals.