NAIROBI: The Ethiopian government on Saturday dismissed warnings by the Tigray authorities that the war-ravaged region was on the brink of famine.
Getachew Reda, the president of Tigray's interim administration, said that 91 per cent of the population was "exposed to the risk of starvation and death".
He likened the situation to the devastating famine in northern Ethiopia in the 1980s that cost the lives of around one million people.
But federal government spokesman Legesse Tulu on Saturday denied the claims, while acknowledging that several million people in northern Ethiopia have been affected by drought as well as flooding.
"Recently, a statement that in the Tigray region the crisis is transitioning to a famine and drought that rivals the 1984-85 famine and drought is completely wrong," Legesse said at a televised press briefing in Addis Ababa.
However, he said that in several areas of Tigray as well as the neighbouring regions of Amhara and Afar, 3.8 million people "have encountered drought risk".
Another 1.1 million people have been affected by flooding, he said, adding that the federal government had been providing aid to those in need.
Getachew had said in a statement on X that Tigray faced a "looming humanitarian catastrophe" because of drought and the lingering effects of the war.
The conflict between federal government forces and Tigrayan rebels that erupted in November 2020 killed hundreds of thousands of people by some estimates, and around one million people remain displaced.
Getachew said the Tigray authorities had declared a disaster emergency in areas under its control but had limited resources to handle the crisis and called on the Ethiopian government and the international community to intervene.
US agency USAID and the UN's World Food Programme halted all food aid to Ethiopia in June, alleging a "widespread and coordinated" campaign to divert donated supplies, but deliveries are slowly resuming.
In a statement published on December 22, the UN's humanitarian response agency OCHA said: "The drought situation is worsening in some parts of northern, southern, and southeastern Ethiopia and is expected to deteriorate further unless aid is urgently scaled up."
It said the food security situation covering the October 2023-May 2024 period in Tigray is likely to deteriorate, while some populations, particularly those displaced, will experience severe food insecurity according to the global Famine Early Warning Systems Network. — AFP
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