ADDIS ABABA/NAIROBI: Ethiopia and the United Nations agreed on Wednesday to channel desperately-needed humanitarian aid to a northern region where a month of war has killed, wounded and uprooted thousands.
The pact, announced by UN officials, gives aid workers access to government-controlled areas of Tigray, where federal troops have been battling the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and captured the regional capital. The war is believed to have killed thousands, sent 45,000 refugees into Sudan, displaced many more within Tigray and worsened suffering in a region where 600,000 people already depended on food aid even before the flare-up from November 4. As hundreds of foreign workers were forced to leave, aid agencies had appealed for urgent safe access.
Food is running out for 96,000 Eritrean refugees in Tigray. .And medics in the local capital Mekelle were short of painkillers, gloves and bodybags, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said at the weekend.
“The UN and the Federal Government of Ethiopia have signed an agreement to ensure that humanitarians will have unimpeded, sustained and secure access ... to areas under the control of the Federal Government in the Tigray Region,” UN humanitarian coordination agency OCHA said in a statement. The government has not commented on the agreement.
After phone and internet connections were largely shut down when the war began, telecoms in half a dozen towns in Tigray were partly restored, Ethio Telecom said on Wednesday.
— Reuters
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