The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) has suspended food distribution in the northern Ethiopian city of Kompolsa due to “mass looting” attributed to guerrillas from the province of Tigray, a UN spokesman said on Wednesday.
“Massive looting of warehouses in Kombolza in recent days, apparently by elements of the Tigray guerrillas and the local population,” were reported in Kombolcha, a town in Amhara province, Stefan Duzarik said during a daily briefing for accredited journalists.
“Large quantities of food, including products intended for malnourished children, have been stolen and looted,” he said, adding that looting threatens to exacerbate food insecurity in northern Ethiopia, although the amount looted remains to be determined.
Attacks on warehouses led to the disruption of food distribution in the towns of Desi and Kombolcha, Duzarik added.
In the provinces of Tigray, Amhara and Afar at the moment “9.4 million people are in critical condition, they need help with food”, he added, emphasizing the large increase in their number.
The United Nations estimates that 5.2 million people are in urgent need of food aid in Tigray, 534,000 in Afar province and 3.7 million in Amhara, Duzarik said.
“WFP teams in the field were unable to prevent the looting, as (…) they were confronted with gun threats,” the spokesman said, citing “unacceptable” violence against UN workers.
The Ethiopian government recently announced that it had recaptured Desi and Kompolza, urban centers and strategic crossroads on the road to the capital, Addis Ababa. The Tigris rebels, for their part, denied that there was any advance by the federal army, claiming that the areas occupied by them were simply abandoned areas, from which their forces withdrew for tactical reasons.
The more than a year-long war in northern Ethiopia broke out in November 2020, when Prime Minister Abi Ahmed sent troops to the northern province of Tigray to overthrow the local government of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). after accusing him of attacks on armed bases.
Source: ΑΠΕ-ΜΠΕ
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Source From: Capital
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