The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) says it is impossible for humanitarians to get vital supplies into Ethiopia’s Tigray region due to the disruption of telephone lines and transport links.
Violence involving federal and local forces erupted last week in Tigray following the reported takeover of an army base in the Tigrayan capital, Mekelle, after which the Prime Minister ordered a military offensive.
There are some 600,000 food beneficiaries in the region, about 100,000 internally displaced persons, and some 96,000 refugees, according to OCHA.
‘With the road closed, food, health, and other emergency supplies have currently no way to make it into Tigray making prepositioning or re-stocking impossible’, it said in a statement.
‘Telephone lines remain cut making information flow and corroboration of media reports very difficult for the humanitarian community, as well as to monitor population movement and additional humanitarian needs’.
Banks in the country are reportedly closed, and vehicles banned from the roads in and out of the region.
The UN agency noted the high risk of children being separated from their parents or caregivers, saying, ‘Existing child protection risks are likely to be exacerbated by the ongoing hostilities’.
‘There are also worries over damage to crops by desert locusts, worsening food insecurity, and the spread of Covid-19’, OCHA noted.
Amnesty International says scores of people were stabbed or hacked to death in Mai-Kadra (May Cadera) town in the southwest zone of Ethiopia’s Tigray Region on 9 November.
The rights organisation said in a statement that its Crisis Evidence Lab had examined and digitally verified gruesome photographs and videos of bodies strewn across the town or being carried away on stretchers.
‘We have confirmed the massacre of a very large number of civilians, who appear to have been day labourers in no way involved in the ongoing military offensive’, the statement quoted AI’s Director for East and Southern Africa, Deprose Muchena, as saying.
Source: UN News
Photo source: UN Humanitarian
