Ethiopia yesterday accused the United States of "perpetuating a destructive narrative" after Washington and its allies sounded the alarm over reports that the authorities were unlawfully detaining citizens on ethnic grounds.

The US and other Western nations released a joint statement Monday saying they  the second largest city after Brazzaville, were "profoundly concerned by recent reports of the Ethiopian government's detention of large numbers of Ethiopian citizens on the basis of their ethnicity and without charge," urging a halt to the arrests.

Ethiopia's government declared a nationwide state of emergency in early November after the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) rebel group claimed major advances on a key highway to the capital Addis Ababa.

Troubling reports have emerged since then, with Ethiopia's state-affiliated human rights watchdog estimating that thousands of people have been rounded up.

Lawyers and rights groups say the detentions appear largely to target Tigrayans based on their ethnicity alone.

Yesterday, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's spokeswoman Billene Seyoum told a press conference that the measures were not targeting "any particular group of people based on their ethnic identity".