The United Nations (UN) Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has asked Ethiopian authorities to stop blanket accusations against aid workers in the country.

Over 1.7 million people have been displaced by fighting between Ethiopian troops and the Tigray Defence Force.

Thousands of people face famine conditions and Ethiopia’s government has been accused of blocking assistance.

Spokesman for the Tigray emergency task force, Redwan Hussein, had alleged last month that aid groups were ‘playing a destructive role’ in the nine-month conflict and even arming the Tigray forces that long dominated Ethiopia’s government before a falling-out with the current prime minister.

However, UN’s Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Martin Griffiths, said such blanket allegations were ‘unfair’.

Speaking to journalists amid a new push to get more badly needed food and other supplies into Tigray, Griffiths acknowledged that his own flights into and out of Tigray had ‘difficulties’ with searches and delays.

Griffiths also told reporters that some progress had been made on aid delivery to Tigray after more than two weeks as 122 trucks with supplies had finally reached the region.

He said that Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed during their talks asserted that he was trying to ensure more than one land route from other parts of Ethiopia into Tigray for aid.

But a route from a neighbouring country such as Sudan can be ‘politically sensitive’, according to Griffiths.

The conflict recently spilled into Ethiopia’s neighbouring Afar and Amhara regions after the Tigray forces rejected the unilateral cease-fire that Ethiopia’s government declared in June.

According to Griffiths, some 100,000 people in the Amhara region have been displaced by the insecurity.

Source: Africanews

Photo source: UNHCR/Will Swanson