BRITAIN reacted furiously yesterday after riot police shot dead at least 23 people, including several women, in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa during a second day of demonstrations over disputed elections.

The continued violence is a deep embarrassment for Tony Blair, who has championed the Ethiopian Prime Minister as belonging to a "new breed" of reformist African leaders. Ethiopia is one of Britain’s biggest aid recipients.

As scores of wounded were taken to ramshackle hospitals across the capital, gangs of youths shouted anti-Blair slogans at Britons living in the city.

One British resident working for the United Nations told The Times: "They were not threatening, but there is a lot of anger over Britain’s support of this government. They shouted things like: ‘Tell Blair to open his eyes’ and ‘Tell your government what is happening here’."

"When is the West going to realise this government is a bunch of morons," another Briton said.

Meles Zenawi, the Prime Minister, is a leading member of Mr Blair’s much-vaunted 17-member Commission for Africa which has led the campaign for greater aid, debt relief and more trade opportunities for African countries in return for economic and democratic reforms. He initially won plaudits for liberal economic reforms in the world’s third poorest country where average annual income is less than £55 a year.

The streets of Addis Ababa were left deserted and strewn with bricks, smouldering rubbish, broken glass and burning tyres after a second day of running battles between police and protestors in most areas of the rundown city.

Heavy machine-gun fire and loud explosions echoed through the city and its sprawling shanty towns as hundreds of heavily-armed riot police fanned out across the capital. Workers at embassies and United Nations were initially told to stay inside and then ordered home during a mid-afternoon lull in the fighting.

The death toll from two days of political violence is now well over 30, but expected to climb much higher.

Ambulances rushed casualties to ramshackle hospitals across the city.

"Oh God help us," said a 19-year-old student Tigest Daniel whose mother was admitted with gunshot wounds. "How can they shoot women? Don’t they know that women are mothers?"

As the violence flared, Ethiopia’s ambassador in London was summoned to the Foreign Office while the United Kingdom’s ambassador to Ethiopia delivered a strong protest note.

Ethiopia, Africa’s second most populous country with a population of over 72 million, has been tense since the ruling party won a third five-year term at elections in May. Despite a large swing to the opposition in many areas there has been little change in parliament

Mr Meles, a former hard line Marxist rebel, has frequently accused the main opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) – popular with Addis Ababa-based intellectuals – of plotting to incite violence and overthrow his government.

In June, members of his personal bodyguard – largely made up of fellow northerners from Tigray province – shot dead at least 36 students protesting on the campus of Addis Ababa university.

That event forced Britain which gives Ethiopia some £30 million in aid each year, to suspend a planned £20 million increase in financial support. Since then, doubts have grown over MrPrime Minister Meles’s democratic credentials.

Since coming to power through the gun in 1991, Mr Meles’s government has fought two disastrous wars with his former allies in neighbouring Eritrea.

United Nations diplomats fear a third is looming and worries the government could further stoke tensions with its neighbours to shift attention from the growing domestic political crisis. Yesterday, UN peacekeepers monitoring a fragile ceasefire said both countries had moved tanks and troops along an increasingly tense border.

The bloody events in Ethiopia are a further embarrassment for Mr Blair whose African policy of encouraging a "new breed" of leaders appears increasingly in tatters.

In Zanzibar yesterday, at the opposite end of East Africa, incumbent President Amani Karume was sworn back into office, but only after opposition leaders protesting his weekend re-election were arrested by army and police under the orders of Tanzania which rules the semi-autonomous island archipelago.

Tanzania’s President Benjamin Mkapa is also a member of Mr Blair’s Commission and is held responsible for three days of riots and violence on Zanzibar following presidential and parliamentary polls held last Sunday.

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