A Facebook page with more than 500 thousand followers shared a post on June 24, 2022, captioned, “OLA and GLF, two militant groups fighting the Ethiopian government, have engaged in fierce combat. be aware that the two military forces have entered the capital of the Gambella region which they were in the past week And take the attack on the military camps.”
By the time this article was published, the post had more than 1400 reactions and was shared over 300 times.
However, HaqCheck has inspected the images and rendered them False.
On June 14, 2022, the same day Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s had a session at the parliament responding to questions from MPs, there was a report of gunfire exchange between joint forces of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLA) and Gambella Liberation Front (GLF). According to news reports, the two rebel forces conducted a sudden siege in the town and opened an attack on government forces.
Gambella Liberation Front shared a post on its Facebook page that the attack targeted Government officials and soldiers.
The government finally announced it controlled the situation.
On the same day, there was a report of fighting between OLA and government forces in the western Wollega Dembi Dolo and Gimbi. political prisoners were released, according to Odda Tarbi, the OLA’s international spokesperson. He also posted on his official Twitter account that OLA troops are fighting the government’s soldiers in Dambidollo.
The post was produced taking advantage of this context.
HaqCheck inspected the post and found out that the image was shared previously on a Facebook page with more than 13 thousand followers with a caption, “Campaign Alula Abanega demonstrates how the struggle in Tigray has raised our heroes’ status by one level.”
The second image was found on a website called OLAcommunique.com on Oct 20, 2021, on their update #13. The article states the victory of OLA in the Bule Hora, Gumi Eldalo, and Saba Boru districts. HaqCheck discovered the image in the article with the caption, “destroyed patrol vehicle in Bule Hora”.
Despite the claims that there is an ongoing clash between the Federal Government and rebels in different areas of Oromia, the images used by this Facebook page to support its claim are unrelated to the information reported by the post.
Due to these reasons, HaqCheck rendered the post False.
