UNITED NATIONS
United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, on Thursday urged Ethiopia’s prime minister and the leader of its restive Tigray region to immediately halt the latest eruption of hostilities, which has set back efforts to restore peace and tackle a humanitarian crisis in Tigray.
Guterres also called for “the
creation of conditions to restart an effective political dialogue” in separate
phone calls with Ethiopian leader Abiy Ahmed and Debretsion Gebremichael, head
of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
Tigray authorities alleged
Wednesday that Ethiopia’s military had launched a “large-scale” offensive for
the first time in a year in Tigray, while the government countered that Tigray
forces attacked first.
The conflict began in November
2020, killing thousands of people in Africa’s second-most populous country.
Now, as then, both sides have acted at a moment when the world was focused
elsewhere — the U.S. presidential election in 2020 and the six-month mark of
the Ukraine war Wednesday.
The conflict had calmed in
recent months amid slow-moving mediation efforts. But last week, Ahmed’s
spokeswoman asserted that Tigray authorities were “refusing to accept peace
talks,” and this week, Ethiopia’s military warned the public against reporting
troop movements.
On Wednesday, the United
Nations said Tigray forces forcibly entered a World Food Program warehouse in
the regional capital, Mekele, and took 12 fuel tankers meant for the delivery
of badly needed humanitarian aid.United Nations Secretary-General,
Antonio Guterres
U.N. humanitarian chief Martin
Griffiths condemned the diversion of the tankers in a statement Thursday,
saying they carrying over 570,000 liters of fuel that was “meant to help the
U.N. and its partners bring humanitarian supplies to people who badly need
assistance.”
“Without them, people will be
left without food, nutrition supplements, medicines and other essential items,”
he warned. “At a time when malnutrition and food insecurity are rising, the
consequences can be dire.”
Griffiths demanded an end to
the obstruction of humanitarian aid and protection of supplies throughout
Ethiopia. He renewed calls to restore basic services in Tigray, including
banking and electricity, “which would contribute substantially to an
improvement in the humanitarian situation in that region.”
Guterres’ spokesman said an
estimated 2 million liters of fuel are required every month for humanitarian
operations.
“It is now the lean season,
and we are highly concerned about the impact this might have on malnutrition
rates and food insecurity in the region,” Dujarric said.
He said that since early
April, when food supplies started getting to Tigray by the only road to Mekele,
more than 81,000 metric tons of food had been distributed to about 4.8 million
people by mid-August.
Earlier this month, the World
Health Organization’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, described
the crisis in Tigray as “the worst disaster on Earth.” Ghebreyesus, an ethnic
Tigrayan, wondered aloud if the reason global leaders have not responded was
due to “the color of the skin of the people in Tigray.”
Humanitarian aid began flowing
to Tigray earlier this year, but the World Food Program said last week that
with little fuel allowed, “this is yet to translate into increased humanitarian
assistance.” The U.N. agency said malnutrition has skyrocketed, with 29% of
children malnourished and 2.4 million people severely food insecure.
Months of political tensions
between Ethiopia’s government and Tigray leaders who once dominated the
government exploded into war in November 2020.
Following some of the fiercest
fighting of the conflict, Ethiopian soldiers fled Mekele in June 2021 and the
government declared a national state of emergency with sweeping powers. A drone-assisted
government military offensive halted the Tigrayans’ approach to Ethiopia’s
capital, Addis Ababa, and last December the Tigrayans retreated back to Tigray.
- AP
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