The post, published on Facebook on July 22, 2025, includes a video with text overlays in Amharic that translate to: “Arat Kilo is in turmoil following the shooting of Abiy by one of his security guards.”
Arat Kilo is the location of the Ethiopian prime minister’s office. The post has been shared more than 230 times.
Another post shared by the same Facebook account a day later claims a “secretly recorded video shows Abiy Ahmed fleeing the country with his wife following yesterday’s protest”.
The post has been shared more than 140 times.
The Facebook account spreading these claims is based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, according to information in the bio. The account regularly publishes posts on political developments in the Sidama region — one of Ethiopia’s 12 regional states.
Despite the end of the brutal two-year war in the northern region of Tigray in November 2022, Ethiopia is still plagued by conflict, including in the Oromia and Amhara regions.
Oromia, Ethiopia’s most populous region, has been dominated by an insurgency involving the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) since 2018, despite attempted peace talks that have failed (archived here).
More recently, a local militia known as Fano was initially allied with the Ethiopian federal government before launching an armed rebellion in the Amhara region in April 2023 (archived here).
The armed conflicts have posed major challenges for Abiy and his government.
However, the videos do not show Abiy fleeing the country after being...
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