To understand what happened at Gimbi requires understanding the fault lines that run through modern Ethiopia. In the 1990s, the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) overthrew the ruling Derg military junta and held power for decades through a coalition government structured along ethnic federalism. When ethnic Oromo politician Abiy Ahmed rose to the premiership in 2018, tensions between his government and the TPLF escalated until they erupted into the Tigray War in late 2020. That conflict spilled across regional boundaries, drawing in armed groups with their own grievances and agendas. The Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), an armed faction that had broken from the political Oromo Liberation Front, intensified its operations in western Oromia. The OLA had been accused of targeting ethnic Amhara communities in the region, people whose families had lived there for generations but who were increasingly seen by some militants as settlers on Oromo land.

The day before the attack, security forces in the Tole area left without explanation. Many residents noticed their departure but had no warning of what would follow. On the morning of June 18, with most adults already gone to work on farms or to attend the local mosque, armed fighters surrounded the villages. A single gunshot signaled the start of the killing. The attackers used guns primarily, but also machetes. Some victims were burned alive. In the farms outside the village of Chefie, 55 people were executed. In Silsaw, 14 women and children were killed inside a vacant home, and more than 48 people died in the town's mosque. Thirteen people in the villages of Gutin Sefer and Silsaw were burned to death. Satellite imagery later confirmed the destruction of at least five villages and 480 civilian structures. The government and witnesses accused the Oromo Liberation Army of carrying out the attack. The OLA denied responsibility, blaming government forces instead.

The massacre did not end the violence — it deepened it. Fano militia fighters from the neighboring Amhara Region launched retaliatory raids into Oromia. In August 2022, Fano and OLA forces clashed in the town of Agamsa. After the OLA withdrew, Fano militiamen accused local Oromo civilians of complicity in the Gimbi killings and executed up to 100 unarmed Oromo people. Oromo residents described the Fano incursions as a daily occurrence, with cattle stolen and shepherds killed. The pattern — atrocity answered by atrocity, each faction claiming self-defense or retribution — consumed ordinary people who wanted no part of any armed struggle. Families who had been neighbors for generations found themselves defined first and fatally by their ethnicity.

The international response came swiftly in words but slowly in action. The US State Department urged accountability and peaceful solutions. UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield called for justice. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed condemned the killings as "unacceptable." Two days after the massacre, the Ethiopian singer Teddy Afro released a song called "Na'at" — meaning "unleavened bread" — reflecting on what he called "the dark time of Ethiopia." But as Human Rights Watch documented, by the end of August 2022, the government had failed to provide adequate shelter, food, medical care, or security for the affected communities. Residents said little had been done to investigate the massacre or to bring perpetrators to justice. The dead remained unaccounted for, the survivors unprotected. What happened at Gimbi was not an isolated eruption but a manifestation of structural failures — ethnic mobilization, state withdrawal, impunity — that continue to claim lives across western Ethiopia.