ADDIS ABABA, Aug. 20 (Xinhua) -- Police arrested 17 Ethiopians, including some former soldiers, over suspected involvement in a series of deadly bomb blasts in Bahir Dar, the capital city of Amhara state in northern Ethiopia, authorities said on Sunday.
City police chief Walelign Dagnew said the suspects were caught with several hand grenades and in possession of 22,000 Ethiopian birr (950 U.S. dollars) to facilitate terror attacks.
Some of the arrested individuals were former Ethiopian defense force members with deep knowhow on how to commit grenade attacks, Dagnew said.
The arrest came amid the first anniversary of clashes between protestors and security forces in Bahir Dar, a lakeside resort 560 km north of Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa. Several people were killed in the clashes.
In August 2016, protestors from the Amhara ethnic group took to the streets in Bahir Dar to vent their anger at perceived political and economic disfranchisement.
Amhara is Ethiopia's second largest ethnic group, accounting for 28 percent of the country's population of 100 million.
There has since been a series of bomb attacks that authorities blamed on "terrorists," in addition to several episodes of labor strikes that hit business hard in the normally busy streets of Bahir Dar.
