ADDIS ABABA, 24 December, 2020, (TON): Ethiopian troops clashed with armed men involved in a deadly attack in the western Benishangul-Gumuz region, killing 42 of them and seizing bows and arrows and other weapons, state-affiliated Fana TV reported on Thursday.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said he was sending more soldiers to secure the region bordering Sudan, the day after unidentified gunmen killed more than 100 people in a village there.

The state-run Ethiopian Human Rights Commission on Wednesday said, gunmen had killed over 100 people in a dawn attack in the village of Bekoji in Bulen country in the Metekel zone, an area where numerous ethnic groups live.

"The massacre of civilians in Benishangul-Gumuz region is very tragic," Abiy said on Twitter. "The government, to solve the root causes of the problem, has deployed a necessary force."

The standoff in the northern Tigray region that has been wrestling with outbreaks of deadly violence began almost as soon as Abiy took office in 2018.

Long-simmering tensions between Ethiopia’s federal government and defiant authorities in its northern Tigray region have erupted into a military confrontation. Hundreds of civilians have died, while tens of thousands have sought refuge in Sudan from airstrikes, as the conflict threatens to further destabilize the strategic Horn of Africa region.

Ethiopia's military has been fighting rebels for more than six weeks in a conflict that has displaced close to 950,000 people.