Millions face starvation in Tigray region after months of warfare

STARVATION IS threatening the survivors of more than two months of fighting in Ethiopia’s Tigray region.

Authorities said yesterday that more than 4.5m people in the region of the African nation need emergency food.

The first humanitarian workers to arrive after pleading with the Ethiopian government for access describe weakened children dying from diarrhea, empty shops and refugees begging for something to eat. One new report says parts of Tigray are likely a step below famine.

Mari Carmen Vinoles, the head of the emergency unit for the Doctors Without Borders aid organisation, said: “There is an extreme urgent need” to scale up the humanitarian response. The population is dying every day as we speak.”

The spectre of hunger is sensitive in Ethiopia, which transformed into one of the world’s fastest-growing economies in the decades since images of starvation there in the 1980s led to a global outcry. Drought, conflict and government denial contributed to the famine, which swept through Tigray and killed an estimated one million people.

The largely agricultural Tigray region of about five million people already had a food security problem amid a locust outbreak when prime minister Abiy Ahmed announced on November 4 that there was fighting between his forces and those of the defiant regional government.

Tigray leaders dominated Ethiopia for almost three decades but were sidelined after Mr Abiy introduced reforms that eventually won him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019. Thousands of people have been killed in the conflict.

More than 50,000 have fled into Sudan, where one doctor has said newer arrivals show signs of starvation. Others shelter in rugged terrain.

In markets, food is “not available or extremely limited”, the United Nations said.