NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) – The United Nations says Ethiopia’s controversial Tigray region is facing “very critical malnutrition” as vast rural areas where many people have fled over three months of fighting remain out of reach of aid .
The UN humanitarian agency also said in a new report that Ethiopian armed forces continue to occupy a hospital in the town of Abi Adi, “preventing up to 500,000 people from accessing health services” in a region where the health system has largely collapsed due to looting and artillery fire.
Alarms are growing about the fate of the approximately 6 million people in the Tigray region, as fighting is said to be as fierce as ever between Ethiopian and Allied forces and those backing the now fugitive Tigray leaders who once dominated the Ethiopian government.
“The needs are huge, but we can’t pretend we don’t see or hear what’s going on,” Ethiopian President Sahle-Work Zewde said in a statement Friday after a visit to Tigray’s capital, Mekele.
In one of the fairest public comments to date from the Ethiopian government, she noted that “significant delays remain in reaching those in need”.
Ethiopia said on Friday that humanitarian aid has reached 2.7 million people in Tigray. But the UN report calls the current response “drastically inadequate,” even if some progress is made.
With about 80% of the population Still out of reach earlier this month, the Ethiopian Red Cross said fears are growing that more people are starving till death.
“The coming weeks will be decisive in preventing famines,” Germany’s Foreign Ministry said in a brief statement last week after hearing reports of a European Union envoy’s visit to Ethiopia.
The new UN report released Friday says that even in areas that can be reached, a screening of 227 children under the age of 5 showed “astonishingly high levels of malnutrition,” although the number of cases was not reported.
It also says a screening of more than 3,500 children found 109 with severe acute malnutrition. The World Health Organization describes that condition as “when a person is extremely thin and is at risk of death”.
“Malnutrition (in Tigray) is expected to worsen as households have to eat fewer meals every day,” the UN report said.
The Tigray conflict started at a vulnerable time, just before the harvest and after months of a regional locust outbreak. The majority of the population consists of subsistence farmers.
The UN report cites “bureaucratic obstacles” and the presence of “different armed actors” as complications in the delivery of aid.
Humanitarian workers have described trying to navigate a patchwork of authorities, including those from the neighboring Amhara region who have settled in some Tigray communities, as well as soldiers from neighboring Eritrea who have accused witnesses of widespread looting and burning of crops.
The Ethiopian government is denying the presence of Eritrean soldiers, although the interim government of the Tigray region has confirmed this, accusing them of looting food aid, according to a recent interview with Voice of America.
The UN report describes a “dire” situation where “COVID-19 services have stopped” in the Tigray region, displaced people in some cases sleep 30 in one classroom and host communities are under “incredible pressure”.