More than 200 Oromo missing in Somalia

As many as 50 Oromo refugees were released recently from prisons in four or five locations in Somalia, but Mahammud Sheik Hussein, the chairman of the Oromo refugee community in Somalia, said this morning that he doesn’t know the whereabouts of more than 200 other Oromo refugees. Hussein says he believes the Oromo community was targeted in the bomb attack in Bossasso that killed more than a dozen people. Mr. Mahammud says, “The enemies of the Oromos do not want the progress of the people." He estimates 52,000 Oromo refugees now live in Somalia. They started crossing Ethiopia’s southern borders in 1963, and in 1977 starting entering Somalia in larger numbers during the Ethio-Somali conflict. Mr. Mahammud says not only the Somali government and the international community have forgotten these Oromo refugees.