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The Ethiopian Red Cross warns that 80 percent of the conflict-stricken Tigray region has been cut off from humanitarian aid.
Eighty percent of Ethiopia’s conflict-affected Tigray region has been cut off from humanitarian aid and tens of thousands of people could starve, the Ethiopian Red Cross has warned.
Wednesday’s grim toll came as fighting between Ethiopian and allied forces and those of the now fugitive Tigray government that had dominated politics for nearly 30 years entered their fourth month.
“Eighty percent of the Tigray are inaccessible at the moment,” Ethiopian Red Cross President Abera Tola told a press conference, adding that famine deaths had already been reported and that numbers could climb quickly.
“The number today could be one, two, or three, but you know, after a month it means thousands. After two months, it will be tens of thousands, ”he said.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said the military campaign in Tigray responded to attacks orchestrated against federal army camps by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the regional ruling party.
At the end of November, he declared victory after the entry of federal forces into the Tigrayan capital Mekelle.
But aid workers and diplomats say continued insecurity has hampered the humanitarian response.
Tola said on Wednesday that access to aid remained largely limited to main roads north and south of Mekelle, excluding most rural areas.
Displaced civilians who have managed to reach camps in Tigrayan towns are “emaciated,” he said.
“You see their skin is really on their bones. You don’t see any food in their body, ”he says. “Sometimes it’s also very difficult to help them without some kind of high nutritional value food.”
Almost 3.8 million people in Tigray need help, Abera said.
Once aid workers are able to reach rural Tigray, “there we will see a more devastating crisis,” Abera said. “We have to prepare for the worst.”
Francesco Rocca, president of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent (IFRC) who visited Tigray this week, told Al Jazeera he was “shocked” by what he had met, describing the accounts of people displaced by the fighting as “unbearable”.
“The situation there is one of the most difficult I have ever seen. People there lack almost everything, ”he said, sounding the alarm on the lack of food and life-saving medicine, among other things.
Rocca said only four out of 40 hospitals are operational in the region and all face major medical supply shortages that have crippled doctors’ ability to perform surgeries.
He also denounced the “unacceptable” looting that ravaged most health establishments in the region, including the disappearance of 140 ambulances from the International Federation.
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