The Habesha
(AFP) – One day in August, Aynalem was on her way to university in the Amhara region of northern Ethiopia when armed men suddenly stopped the bus and climbed aboard. They were all very young and threatened us with assault rifles. I was terrified, recalled the 21-year-old biomedical engineering student. The kidnappers blindfolded Aynalem and the other passengers. After several hours on the road, they forced her to call her family to demand a ransom payment. They wanted 500,000 birr (about $4,400), a huge sum in a country where more than a third of the population lives below the poverty line.
The Habesha Ethiopian News
Monday 20 October 2025
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