NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) – The Ethiopian government has told private employees of the Biden administration that the controversial Tigray region has “ returned to normal, ” but new witness reports describe terrified residents of Tigray hiding in houses with bullets and a vast rural area where the effects of fighting and food shortages are not yet known.
The conflict that started in November between the Ethiopian armed forces and those of the Tigray region, which dominated the government for nearly three decades, remains largely in the shadows. Some communication links are cut, residents are afraid to give details over the phone and almost all journalists are blocked. Thousands of people have died.
Ethiopia’s Deputy Prime Minister Demeke Mekonnen and colleagues briefed a private meeting on Friday hosted by the Atlantic Council think tank. They said nearly 1.5 million people in Tigray have been reached with humanitarian assistance, and expressed displeasure at “false and politically motivated allegations” of mistreatment of refugees from neighboring Eritrea, state-affiliated Fana Broadcasting Corporate reported. It said Biden’s administration attended the meeting.
The refugees are targeted by soldiers from Eritrea, who are fighting with Ethiopian troops against the Tigray forces. The Biden government has pressured Eritrea to withdraw “immediately” them, citing credible records looting, sexual assault and other abuse.
Despite Ethiopia’s latest claims, recently appointed officials in Tigray estimate that more than 4.5 million people, or nearly the entire population of the region, are in need of emergency food assistance and that some people have died. from hunger. This is evident from leaked documents from a crisis meeting of the government and aid workers in early January.
And a new report from an MSF emergency coordinator in Tigray, Albert Vinas, says “we are very concerned about what could happen in the countryside,” with many places inaccessible due to fighting or difficulties in 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 account posted online Friday.
He described the residents of Tigray handing his colleagues scraps of paper with telephone numbers and asking for help to reach their families, whom they had not heard from for weeks.
“We saw a population trapped in their homes and living in great fear,” he wrote after a visit to the city of Adigrat and the cities of Axum and Adwa, which began in late December.
In Adigrat, one of the largest cities of Tigray, “the situation was very tense and the hospital was in a terrible condition,” added Vinas, “with no food, no water, and no money. Some patients admitted with traumatic injuries. , were malnourished. ”One woman had been in labor for a week.
Except for hospitals, up to 90% of the health centers between the capital of Tigray, Mekele, and Axum in the north towards Eritrea were not functioning, he said. “A large population is suffering, with certainly fatal consequences. … There have been no vaccinations for nearly three months, so we fear epidemics will come soon. “
In a separate report posted by the World Peace Foundation on Friday, former Ethiopian senior official Mulugeta Gebrehiwot Berhe told director Alex de Waal in a telephone interview from rural Tigray that “farmer hunger is paralyzing” in areas bordering Eritrea after Eritrean troops have been burned or looted. crops just before harvest.
“Soon we may see a massive humanitarian crisis,” Mulugeta said.
Eritrean officials have not responded to inquiries or confirmed the involvement of their soldiers, and Ethiopia has denied their presence despite witness statements.
The food situation in Tigray was “extremely bad” even before the fighting started due to a locust outbreak and the COVID-19 pandemic, Oxfam country director in Ethiopia, Gezahegn Kebede Gebrehana, told The Associated Press.
“When the fighting took place, many people fled into the bush. But when they returned, most found their homes destroyed or all property looted, ”he said after an assessment in southern Tigray, which some say is the most accessible part of the region. “Food is a very, very prominent necessity of what we saw.”
International pressure on Ethiopia to grant unrestricted humanitarian access to Tigray, now an intricate patchwork of local authorities, but Gezahegn warned against suspending aid to the government if the European Union recently did.
“The donor community may think they will push the Ethiopian government, but the Ethiopian government will never surrender,” he said. He recognized the “good intentions” but said “it is the people who are suffering.”