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Category: Resource

France24: Ethiopian Red Cross says 80 percent of Tigray cut off from aid

Posted on by Tech Support

The Ethiopian Red Cross said Wednesday that 80 percent of the country’s conflict-hit Tigray region was cut off from humanitarian assistance and warned tens of thousands could starve to death.

The grim assessment underscores fears of a humanitarian catastrophe three months after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, the 2019 Nobel Peace laureate, announced military operations aimed at toppling the region’s former ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).

“Eighty percent of the Tigray is unreachable at this particular time,” the president of the Ethiopian Red Cross Society, Abera Tola, told a press conference.

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ABC News: ‘Emaciated’ survivors hint at worse in Ethiopia’s Tigray

Posted on by Tech Support

“Many, many severe cases of malnutrition” are being reported in Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region, Red Cross officials said Wednesday, as 80% of Tigray’s 6 million people are unreachable in the fourth month of fighting and “emaciated” women and children fill displacement camps.

Reports of people already starving to death might just be a handful, but “after a month it will be in the thousands,” warned Ethiopian Red Cross president Ato Abera Tola. After two months, he said, it will be tens of thousands.

Fighting continues between Ethiopian and allied forces and those of the now-fugitive Tigray government that had dominated the country’s leadership for nearly 30 years.

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Europe External Program with Africa: Situation Report # 81

Posted on by Eyasu Berhe

  • Unconfirmed report received that a payment of 500mln US dollars was made by Ethiopia to President Esayas of Eritrea and that Eritrea was provided with weapons for its participation in the war in Tigray.
  • Unconfirmed report that when the National Security director of Eritrea visited Addis, he requested that the Ethiopian government would make the second additional payment of 500 mln USD so that Eritrean
    troops could do the ‘final offensive’ in Tigray.
  • The understanding is that reportedly PM Abiy promised 1 billion USD to President Esayas from Eritrea, to be paid in two parts.
  • In exchange, President Esayas from Eritrea offered his Indefinite National Service recruits to serve in the war in Tigray.
  • National service troops of Eritrea have also been serving as mercenaries in the war in Yemen, despite the UN sanctions that were in place to curb Eritrea participation in regional destabilization, until 2018.
  • It is reported that the clashes between Ethiopia and Eritrea troops in Tigray a few weeks ago were caused by differences in the division of weapons between the two parties in the alliance. Reportedly
    many soldiers were killed on both sides.
  • Ethiopia has closed two camps which previously sheltered internationally recognized Eritrean refugees in Tigray, Shemelba and Hitsats. Satellite footage shows the camps were completely destroyed. 20.000 refugees from the camps have disappeared and 10.000 are alleged to have been abducted to Eritrea.
  • One year ago, President Esayas from Eritrea pressurised Ethiopia to close the four camps in Tigray. Many of the Eritrean refugees sheltered in the camps have fled the indefinite national service in
    Eritrea. It is a cruel practice which, according to the UN, constitutes a Crime against Humanity.
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Human Rights Watch concludes Abiy Ahmed’s soldiers bombed civilians to death, schools, hospitals and markets in Tigray region

Posted on by Tech Support

Ethiopian federal forces carried out apparently indiscriminate shelling of urban areas in the Tigray region in November 2020 in violation of the laws of war, Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday. Artillery attacks at the start of the armed conflict struck homes,hospitals, schools, and markets in the city of Mekelle, and the towns of Humera and Shire, killing at least 83 civilians, including children, and wounding over 300.

“At the war’s start, Ethiopian federal forces fired artillery into Tigray’s urban areas in an apparently indiscriminate manner that was bound to cause civilian casualties and property damage,” said Laetitia Bader, Horn of Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “These attacks have shattered civilian lives in Tigray and displaced thousands of people, underscoring the urgency for ending unlawful attacks and holding those responsible to account.”

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Reuters: ‘People die at home’: Tigray medical services struggle after turmoil of war

Posted on by Eyasu Berhe

A diabetic mother died as her daughter searched the capital of Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region for insulin. Women gave birth unattended in the dark because their hospital had no electricity or staff at night.

“The health system in Tigray is reportedly nearly collapsing,” the United Nation’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a Feb. 4 report, noting that only three of the region’s 11 hospitals were working properly.

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Encyclopedia: Food As A Weapon Of War

Posted on by Sami Mulaw

Many countries have adopted a “scorched earth” policy (destroying anything that might be of use to an invading enemy) to prevent an invading army from living off the land. Both attackers and defenders in conventional wars and guerrilla struggles have used this strategy.

Since, as Napoleon is quoted as saying, “An army marches on its stomach,” procuring enough food to support an army in the field is a paramount concern for all commanders. Although weapons, clothing, and shelter are of the greatest immediate importance to soldiers, logistical support to provide food and material is often the decisive element in winning wars. Soldiers often had to truly “live off the land” even when in permanent garrisons or semipermanent encampments during lengthy sieges. 

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Aljazeera: Starvation crisis looms as aid groups seek urgent Tigray access

Posted on by Sami Mulaw

“People are dying of starvation. In Adwa, people are dying while they are sleeping. [It’s] also the same in other zones in the region,” 

“If the government is to be taken at its word that its campaign is aimed only at ousting the TPLF and not at harming the Tigrayan people, they should swiftly accede to the demands of humanitarian agencies for access to Tigray and even to areas TPLF forces may still control to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe of the sort that would make it harder to find a path out of this devastating conflict.”

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