Posts falsely claim to show footage of Ethiopian prime minister fleeing country after shooting

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.”

Image

Screenshot of the false post, taken on July 29, 2025 

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”.

Image

Screenshot of the false post, taken on July 29, 2025 

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 shot. 

Ethiopian cargo flight 

AFP Fact Check used the video verification tool InVID-WeVerify to conduct reverse image searches on keyframes from the video showing an aeroplane taking off at night. 

The results established that the video was first published on TikTok in 2021, with the caption that it shows an Ethiopian Airlines cargo Boeing 777 leaving for Liège in Belgium (archived here). 

An official statement issued in 2024 by Ethiopian Airlines confirms how the airports in Ethiopia and Liège have maintained a partnership for the transport of goods between Europe, Africa and the rest of the world for more than 17 years (archived here). 

Despite claims in the post that Abiy had fled the country following a protest in the capital on July 21, 2025, searches revealed there were no demonstrations in Addis Ababa on that day.

We could not find the source of the second video, which appears to be user-generated content (UGC) -- meaning it was filmed by a bystander -- of police cars racing through a street, purportedly after Abiy was shot by a bodyguard.

AFP Fact Check compared the images of the vehicles, some of them marked with the letters “EFP” in yellow, and found they resemble the fleet used by the Ethiopian Federal Police.

Image

Screenshots of the false video (left) and matching image of vehicle from Ethiopian federal police official Facebook page 

We have reached out to the Ethiopian Federal Police for comment. The article will be updated accordingly.

A keyword search confirmed that Abiy delivered a public speech at the World Food Systems event, co-hosted with Italy and held in Addis Ababa, on July 28, 2025 -- days after the posts were published (archived here). 

Notably, there are no credible media reports of Abiy being shot by one of his security guards, the day before he purportedly fled the country with his wife.