Ethiopia: IOM Assists Grenade Attack Victims Back Home The Daily Monitor (Addis Ababa) 16 March 2008 Biruk Girma Addis Ababa The International Organization for Migrants (IOM) on Wednsday said it brought home 33 Ethiopians who were victims of a grenade attack in Somalia's port town of Bossasso in early February as well as their close relatives. The organization 21 of the 33 suffered mainly from bone fractures or limb amputations and in need of urgent hospitalization. The returnees, all men except for one woman, are from southwestern and northern part of Ethiopia. The attack on 6 February killed 22 people and wounded another 74, mostly Ethiopian migrants wanting to make the perilous sea crossing across the Gulf of Aden to Yemen using smuggling networks. The journey across the Gulf of Aden is particularly dangerous with 1,400 migrants reported dead or missing in 2007 alone, according to UNHCR. IOM said large numbers of Ethiopian migrants still remain in Bossasso despite the change in weather making sea crossings too dangerous for small boats. "We have yet to trace the families of all the bomb victims," Bill Lorenz IOM's operations Officer for the region, said in a statement. "Some of the migrants are still traumatized by what has happened to them and are nervous about coming home. We're hoping that being back in Ethiopia will help lessen their trauma and that will help us to link them to their families," he added. Together with UNHCR, UNOCHA and the Danish Refugee Council, IOM offices in the region have been working to provide assistance and information to migrants traveling to Bossasso in Somalia's Puntland, a major human smuggling hotspot for Somalis and Ethiopians seeking either protection or better work opportunities in the Gulf and beyond. In an effort to combat illegal migration of Ethiopians, IOM has begun a new counter-smuggling and counter-trafficking information campaign targeting potential migrants in rural Ethiopia, the organization said.

Dear Editor, The Ethiopian foreign minister must have never known of the very simple logic that "action speaks louder than words". As for Eritreans, they can't be fooled by an Ethiopian wolf in sheep skin, blubbering something about peace, while waging 50 years of war, death and destruction against Eritreans. After all, it has been said, "those who fail to remember history are condemned to repeat it". I would say the Ethiopians foreign minister must have missed that part of common sense too. It's great comic, that some politicians still think they can fool all the people all of the time. Look all over the Ethio-Eritrean history and see what Ethiopians have in mind for Eritreans and other Africans, Somalia & millions of other ethnic Ethiopians. After 50 years of war against Eritreans, Somalis and other ethnic-Ethiopians, instead of seeking peace & development, Ethiopia is still waging wars against other Africans, Eritrea, Somalia & millions other ethnic Ethiopians in the service of it's American masters in the White House. One can NOT have it both ways. One wonders, how Ethiopia will achieve peace while waging wars against all it's neighbors.