Imi, Ethiopia

Imi (also transliterated as Imay and Hinna) is a village in the Somali Region of Ethiopia. It is located in the Mirab Imi woreda of the Afder Zone on the north bank of the Shebelle River, at latitude and longitude coord|6|28|N|42|10|E with an elevation of 442 meters above sea level.

The Central Statistical Agency has not published an estimate for this village's 2005 population. Imi hosts an airport (ICAO code HAIM) which consists of an unpaved airstrip about 1050 meters in length, possibly the shortest in an Ethiopian civil airport.

History

Near Imi, Ras Makonnen's troops had suffered a grievous defeat by the Rer Amaden warriors in 1890. Italian explorers who visited Imi early in 1891 found the once prosperous village "squalid" and miserable because of raids from Harar. A local landmark in Imi is the tomb of Mohammed Abdullah Hassan, known as "Mad Mullah"; he died in 1921, but by the 1930s his tomb had become a shapeless heap of rubble. [http://130.238.24.99/library/resources/dossiers/local_history_of_ethiopia/i/ORTIL.pdf "Local History in Ethiopia"] (pdf) The Nordic Africa Institute website (accessed 10 January 2008)]

In 1964 the Bale rebels attacked larger settlements, such as Kere and Imi and, while they failed to capture them, they succeeded in gaining control of the rest of the district as smaller posts were abandoned by government forces. Of these two, Imi was the only one which the rebels at one point captured and held briefly. Twelve years later, 17 policemen were reported killed from an attack on Imi in October 1976. During the Ogaden War, well-armed guerillas besieged Imi and other local towns.

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