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Ethiopia: New aid convoys arrive or move to Tigray

New humanitarian aid convoys arrived or were heading to Mecca on Thursday, the capital of Ethiopia’s Tigray province, a theater of war that has been threatened with famine since November 2020, according to the World Food Program (WFP). Committee of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Society (ICRC).

A DEES vehicle convoy, consisting of about ten trucks, according to a source, arrived in Mekele yesterday, Thursday, the care and assistance organization announced. This “second convoy that arrived in Tigray this month” at the initiative of the ICRC carries “medical supplies, food and equipment destined for an orthopedic rehabilitation center,” she explained via Twitter.

Another convoy, the PEP, is on its way to Meckele, the United Nations said via Twitter. It consists of “47 trucks” carrying “food” and other “vital supplies”, as well as “three fuel tankers”, intended for distribution to communities.

The convoy includes trucks from the WFP, UNICEF, JEOP (Joint Emergency Operation, NGO) and other organizations, said a source close to humanitarian organizations at the French Agency.

The humanitarian aid convoys, which had stopped leaving in mid-December, resumed operations on April 1 through the neighboring state of Afar following the announcement in late March of a “ceasefire” agreement between the federal army and the army. Ethiopian government and the guerrillas of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).

The first convoy after three months, consisting of about twenty trucks, arrived in Meckele on April 1st with 500 tonnes of food, followed the next day by DEES cars with medicines, food and water purifiers to make it drinkable.

From mid-December to April 1, medical supplies and food could only be delivered by air to Tigray in smaller and smaller quantities as the roads were closed to humanitarian vehicles.

Amid fighting and insecurity in Afar, part of which has been taken over by the TPLF, the federal government and rebels have long been accused of obstructing the delivery of humanitarian aid.

The government of Prime Minister Abi Ahmed announced yesterday that it had “facilitated the relocation” of the 60 trucks of the two departments that departed in the last two days and reaffirmed its “commitment” to “work closely” with the international community and other partners to ensure proper access to humanitarian aid “in Tigray.

At the same time, he called on the international community “to put pressure on the Tigris fighters to withdraw completely from the areas they occupy in the Afar and Amhara states”, which are adjacent to the Tigris, “in order to pave the way for the smooth delivery of aid to those need “in them.

The withdrawal of TPLF fighters from Afar and Amhara was one of the conditions set by Addis Ababa to implement the “ceasefire” announced in late March.

The humanitarian shipment by road coincided with the visit of the US Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa, David Sutherfield, to Ethiopia, as Washington intensified diplomatic pressure to allow the passage of aid.

It was also announced 48 hours after the TPLF’s assurance that its last forces had withdrawn from Erebti, an area they held in Afar. Their departure has not been confirmed by the federal government so far.

The aid that has arrived in Tigray since April 1 is more than enough, given the huge needs in that state, according to observers.

About 4.6 million people, in other words 83% of its six million inhabitants, are in a state of “food insecurity”, while two million suffer from “acute malnutrition”, the WFP estimated in January.

The war in Tigray, the death toll of which is unknown, erupted when Prime Minister Abby sent the federal army to overthrow the state government of the TPLF, the party that ruled the country for almost 30 years because he had been in power for months. .

Abby Ahmed, the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize winner, has accused the TPLF of attacking federal army bases. After capturing Mecca within a month, his army was driven out of Tigray in a large-scale TPLF counterattack, and the war, marked by much brutality on both sides, spread to the neighboring states of Afar and Amhara.

SOURCE: ΑΠΕ-ΜΠΕ

Source: Capital

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