NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) – The Ethiopian government has told private Biden administration staff that the plagued Tigray region is “normal again”, but new evidence reports describe the frightened residents of Tigray living in bullet-marked houses and a vast rural area. area hides where effects of the fighting occur and food shortages are still unknown.
The conflict that began in November between Ethiopian forces and that of the Tigray region, which has dominated the government for nearly three decades, is largely overshadowed. Some communication links have been broken, residents are afraid to give telephone details and almost all journalists are blocked. Thousands of people were killed.
Ethiopia’s Deputy Prime Minister Demeke Mekonnen and colleagues briefed a private meeting hosted by the Atlantic Council’s think tank on Friday. They said nearly 1.5 million people in Tigray had been reached with humanitarian aid, and that they had spoken uncomfortably about ‘false and politically motivated allegations’ of mistreatment of refugees from neighboring Eritrea, state announcement Fana Broadcasting Corporate reported. It is said that staff from Biden’s administration attended the meeting.
The refugees were targeted by Eritrean soldiers fighting alongside Ethiopian troops against the Tigray forces. Biden’s government urges Eritrea to withdraw “immediately” them, with reference to credible accounts of looting, sexual assault and other abuse.
Despite Ethiopia’s latest allegations, recently appointed administrators in Tigray estimated that more than 4.5 million people, or close to the entire population of the region, needed first aid and that some people had begun to die. of hunger. This is evident from leaked documents from a crisis meeting of the government and aid workers in early January.
And a new report by Tigray’s emergency border coordinator, Albert Vinas, says ‘we are very concerned about what could happen in rural areas’, with many places inaccessible due to fighting or problems obtaining permission.
“But we know, because community elders and traditional authorities have told us, that the situation in these places is very bad,” he said in the report published Friday.
He described Tigray residents handing over his colleagues’ paper phone numbers and asking for help reaching their families, whom they had not heard from for weeks.
“We have seen a population locked up in their homes and living in great fear,” he wrote after visiting the city of Adigrat and the towns of Axum and Adwa in early December.
In Adigrat, one of Tigray’s largest cities, ‘the situation was very tense and the hospital was in a terrible state’, Vinas added, with ‘no food, no water and no money. Some patients admitted with traumatic injuries were malnourished. One woman has been in labor for a week.
In addition to hospitals, up to 90% of the health centers operate between the capital Tigray, Mekele and Axum in the north towards Eritrea, he said. ‘There is a large population that is suffering, with fatal consequences. … No vaccinations have been done in almost three months, so we fear there will be epidemics soon. ”
In a separate report published by the World Peace Foundation on Friday, former senior Ethiopian official Mulugeta Gebrehiwot Berhe told director Alex de Waal in a telephone interview with rural Tigray that ‘hunger among farmers is paralyzing’ in areas adjacent to Eritrea border, after Eritrean forces were burned or plundered. crops just before harvest.
“Soon we may see a massive humanitarian crisis,” Mulugeta said.
Eritrean officials did not respond to questions or confirm their involvement of soldiers, and Ethiopia denied their presence despite testimony.
The food situation in Tigray was already ‘extremely bad’ before the fighting began due to a locust outbreak and the COVID-19 pandemic, Oxfam’s land director in Ethiopia, Gezahegn Kebede Gebrehana, told The Associated Press.
“When the fighting took place, many people fled into the forest. “When they returned, most found their homes had been destroyed or all their belongings looted,” he said after an assessment in southern Tigray. “Food is a very, very prominent necessity, according to what we have seen.”
International pressure continues on Ethiopia to allow unrestricted humanitarian access to Tigray, now a complicated patchwork of local authorities, but Gezahegn warned against suspending support to the government as the European Union. recently done.
“The donor community may think they will push the Ethiopian government, but the Ethiopian government will never give up,” he said. He acknowledged the “good intentions” but said, “these are the people who are suffering.”