Albert Viñas has been involved in almost 50 emergency responses with Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors without Borders (MSF) over 20 years. He has just returned from his sixth mission in Ethiopia, where his role was to prepare the way for medical teams to access areas of eastern and central Tigray and assist people affected by the current crisis. Since violence broke out in this northern Ethiopian region in early November, some 60,000 people have taken refuge in Sudan and hundreds of thousands have been displaced within Tigray. He describes what he found.
Category: Humanitarian Crisis
The Economist: After two months of war, Tigray faces starvation
Several other senior tplf figures have been killed by the army. Among them was Seyoum Mesfin, Ethiopia’s longest-serving foreign minister. The killings and arrests appear to have left the tplf in disarray. Its leaders, including the ousted president of the Tigray region, Debretsion Gebremichael, have been in hiding for over a month. Although the tplf still controls sizeable swathes of rural Tigray, it holds no towns or cities. Allies of Abiy, who has already declared victory, believe it is only a matter of time before the rest of what he calls the “junta” are captured or killed.
Starvation crisis looms as aid groups seek urgent Tigray access
Humanitarians sound alarm for millions of people in need of emergency assistance in Ethiopia’s conflict-hit northern region.
Sentinel: ‘Extreme urgent need’: Starvation haunts Ethiopia’s Tigray
“There is an extreme urgent need — I don’t know what more words in English to use — to rapidly scale up the humanitarian response because the population is dying every day as we speak,”
“It is a daily reality to hear people dying with the fighting consequences, lack of food,”
Hunger is “very concerning,” she said, and even water is scarce: Just two of 21 wells still work in Adigrat, a city of more than 140,000, forcing many people to drink from the river. With sanitation suffering, disease follows.
Chron: ‘Extreme urgent need’: Starvation haunts Ethiopia’s Tigray
From “emaciated” refugees to crops burned on the brink of harvest, starvation threatens the survivors of more than two months of fighting in Ethiopia’s Tigray region.
“There is an extreme urgent need — I don’t know what more words in English to use — to rapidly scale up the humanitarian response because the population is dying every day as we speak,” Mari Carmen Vinoles, head of the emergency unit for Doctors Without Borders, told the AP.
UN: Ethiopia’s conflict has ‘appalling impact on civilians’
“We have corroborated information of gross human rights violations and abuses including indiscriminate attacks against civilians and civilian objects, looting, abductions and sexual violence against women and girls,” Bachelet told reporters. “There are reports of forced recruitment of Tigrayan youth to fight against their own communities.”
Fleeing Ethiopians Tell of Ethnic Massacres in Tigray War
Ethiopian refugees sharing a shelter in Hamdayet, Sudan, the first stop for new arrivals after crossing the border from Ethiopia.
Ethiopia says U.N. team shot at in Tigray after defying checkpoints
“In Mekelle, a doctor reached by Reuters said the hospital where he works was “totally non-functional” due to lack of electricity, fuel for generators, oxygen and medical supplies. Medics were unable to perform emergency surgery or effectively treat patients for problems such as childbirth complications and diabetes.
“Patients are dying outside and inside the hospital,” he wrote in a message, saying that he was aware of three women who died after delivering babies at home and an infant on a ventilator who died because there was no oxygen.”
They left us for dead.’ Tigray refugees tell of horrors after Ethiopian troops vowed they’d be safe
“Gabrgeorgis says that in his town — Sheraro on the Eritrea-Ethiopia border — the Eritrean military took over when Ethiopian troops left. “”They beat us with the machine guns, they would make us lie on the ground and put the weapon in our mouths,”” he said. “”If you are afraid, they will kill you, and if you don’t show fear, they turn you on your back and hit you with the back of the rifle.”””
In Pictures: Ethiopian refugees in Sudan face uncertain future
Tens of thousands of displaced Ethiopian refugees are running out of food and water due to the month-long conflict that has forced almost 50,000 to flee.
Those who fled the violence believe they are the lucky ones. A vast majority of the refugees living in Sudan’s Um Rakuba camp, which means “mother of all shelters”, are male. They say they saw other men being killed, and fled for their lives.