Doctors and aid workers describe race against time to keep patients alive in northern Ethiopian region
Convoys carrying desperately needed food aid have entered Tigray, as humanitarian groups gained access to the war-torn northern Ethiopian region for the first time since a ceasefire agreement was signed two-week ago.
Doctors and aid workers in Tigray have described a race against time to keep sick or malnourished patients alive as they wait for humanitarian assistance.
Continue reading...Region is in the grip of a severe crisis due to a lack of food and medicine after a two-year conflict
Ethiopia’s government and Tigrayan rebels have agreed to facilitate immediate humanitarian access to “all in need” in war-ravaged Tigray and neighbouring regions.
The agreement followed talks in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi this week on the full implementation of a deal signed between the warring sides 10 days ago to end the brutal two-year conflict in northern Ethiopia.
Continue reading...Restart of aid imminent after surprise deal earlier this week brought prospect of end to blockade and one of Africa’s deadliest conflicts
Doctors and aid workers in Tigray are racing against time to keep desperately sick or malnourished patients alive as they wait for humanitarian assistance after a surprise peace deal potentially ended the conflict in northern Ethiopia.
In the deal, signed on Wednesday in South Africa, the federal government pledged to end the blockade on Tigray imposed at the beginning of the war two years ago, while the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the political movement in power in the region, agreed to disarm its forces.
Continue reading...UK parliamentarians call for inquiry into 2% levy on Eritreans abroad, amid fears that it fuels Tigray war
A group of UK parliamentarians is calling for an urgent investigation into the collection of a “diaspora tax” by the Eritrean authorities, which they say could have helped fund war in neighbouring Ethiopia.
MPs and members of the House of Lords want the government to launch a “full, formal, and fully funded” public inquiry into the collection of the 2% tax in the UK, and take “robust action to stop the practice”.
Continue reading...Insecticide-resistant newcomer caused unprecedented urban outbreak in Ethiopia and can survive the dry season, scientists say
Scientists are warning that the invasion of an insecticide-resistant mosquito could change Africa’s “landscape of malaria” after research showed it caused an unprecedented urban outbreak in Ethiopia.
An investigation into a steep rise in cases in the Ethiopian city of Dire Dawa during a dry season this year identified the mosquito as the cause of the outbreak. Scientists say it is the strongest evidence to date that it could prompt surges of malaria in areas typically less affected by the disease.
Continue reading...Breakthrough ‘monumental’ says prime minister after two-year conflict between north Tigray and federal forces that displaced millions
Ethiopia’s warring sides have formally agreed to a permanent cessation of hostilities, an African Union special envoy said on Wednesday, bringing hope of an imminent end to a two-year war that has displaced millions and threatened to destabilise a swath of the continent.
Nigeria’s former president Olusegun Obasanjo, in the first briefing on the peace talks in Pretoria, South Africa’s administrative capital, also said Ethiopia’s government and Tigray authorities had agreed on an “orderly, smooth and coordinated disarmament”.
Continue reading...Bodies tentatively identified as adults being secretly transported to South Africa on perilous ‘southern route’
Dozens of Ethiopian people whose remains were found in mass graves in northern Malawi last month most likely suffocated to death while being secretly transported, investigators and campaigners believe.
The tragedy came amid a spate of incidents underlining the dangers faced by tens of thousands of people who entrust their lives to criminal networks that promise passage to South Africa, the most developed country on the continent.
Continue reading...Violence has intensified recently as Ethiopia and TPLF seek to bolster their negotiating position
Peace talks aiming to end the nearly two-year-old war in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia have started in South Africa, although the chances of bringing the conflict to an immediate stop are believed to be low.
Representatives of the Ethiopian government and a team sent by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), a political organisation that has ruled the northern region for decades, are to spend five days together in the most serious effort yet to find a negotiated solution to the conflict.
Continue reading...Bodies of four men, believed to be en route to South Africa, found less than a mile from where 25 bodies were exhumed in Mzimba
Authorities in Malawi have discovered four bodies in a forest close to where dozens more were found in a mass grave on Wednesday.
Police say the bodies were found yesterday morning, less than a mile from where 25 others were exhumed in Mtangatanga Forest Reserve in the northern district of Mzimba.
Continue reading...Authorities alerted by villagers in Mzimba area, 250km north of capital, to site believed less than a month old
Authorities in Malawi have discovered a mass grave in the north of the country containing the remains of 25 people suspected to be migrants from Ethiopia.
“The grave was discovered late on Tuesday but we cordoned it off and started exhuming today. So far, we have discovered 25 bodies,” said a police spokesperson, Peter Kalaya.
Continue reading...Urgent aid response needed as climate crisis, Covid, local conflicts and soaring fuel prices push millions more into hunger
• ‘We need urgent help’: Somalis displaced by drought and famine fight to survive
Decades of work to reduce hunger in Africa are being reversed as the continent struggles to cope with conflict, climate crisis and the global economic downturn, the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) has warned.
About 278 million people in Africa – approximately one-fifth of the total population – went hungry in 2021, an increase of 50 million people since 2019, according to UN figures. Based on current trends, this is projected to rise to 310 million by 2030.
Continue reading...Witnesses claim the attacks in Amhara region last month were carried out on those the TPLF suspected of supporting Ethiopian federal forces
Tigrayan rebel forces have killed dozens of civilians during their latest occupation of a town in the Amhara region, survivors claim, after fighting resumed last month in the northern area of Ethiopia.
The alleged killings took place in the town of Kobo, located along the highway to the capital, Addis Ababa. Between 13-15 September, Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) fighters shot dead unarmed civilians they suspected of supporting federal forces and local militias, survivors have told the Guardian.
Continue reading...International Diabetic Federation decries reports ongoing war has led to shortages of life-saving drug at Ethiopian region’s biggest hospital
Doctors at the biggest hospital in Tigray say they have just days supply left of insulin, as the resumption of fighting between rebels and Ethiopian government troops once again cuts off supplies to the region.
In what the head of the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) has branded “a humanitarian crime,” medics at Ayder specialist referral hospital warn they have already run out of one kind of the life-saving medicine and have only a week’s supply of another.
Continue reading...Experts warn that girls’ education will be worst hit, as many families are forced to move away from schools
More than 3.5 million children are at risk of dropping out of school due to the drought in the Horn of Africa, the United Nations has said, amid warnings the crisis could lead to “a lost generation” that misses out on education.
According to new figures shared with the Guardian, Unicef now estimates that 3.6 million children in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia are in danger of leaving school as a result of the cumulative pressure on households caused by the unrelenting drought.
Continue reading...Tigray People’s Liberation Front says Eritreans are fighting alongside Ethiopian government forces
Forces in Ethiopia’s Tigray region said troops from neighbouring Eritrea launched a “full-scale offensive” on Tuesday and heavy fighting was ongoing in several areas along the border.
Reuters was not immediately able to verify the account on Twitter from Getachew Reda, a spokesperson for the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).
Continue reading...Food experts say shipment is drop in bucket for drought-hit Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia but hope supplies pick up
The first ship carrying grain from Ukraine for people in the hungriest parts of the world has docked at Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa, as areas of east Africa are badly affected by deadly drought and conflict.
Food security experts say it is a drop in the bucket for the vast needs in the worst-hit countries of Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia, the country to which the shipment is going. But the flow of Ukrainian grain to other hungry parts of the world is expected to continue, with another ship leaving on Tuesday for Yemen. The UN World Food Programme has said it was working on multiple ships.
Continue reading...Medical officials say three children among those killed as fighting resumes in northern Ethiopia days after a truce collapsed
An airstrike on a children’s playground has killed at least seven people in the capital of Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, medical officials there said, in the first such attack after a four-month-old ceasefire collapsed this week.
The officials said three children were among the dead but a federal government spokesperson denied any civilian casualties.
Continue reading...Tigrayan rebels and government each accuse the other of striking first as conflict resumes
Fighting has erupted between government forces and Tigrayan rebels in northern Ethiopia, shattering a five-month truce between the warring sides.
Both have repeatedly blamed the other for a lack of progress towards negotiations to end the 21-month conflict in Africa’s second most populous nation.
Continue reading...Urgent action needed to avert further disaster in war-torn country as funding ‘fast running out’
Nearly one in three children under five in the Ethiopian region of Tigray are malnourished and the UN said urgent action is needed to prevent them from dying.
According to a new emergency assessment carried out by the World Food Programme (WFP), 29% of very young children are suffering from global acute malnutrition (GAM). More than half of pregnant or breastfeeding woman are also malnourished.
Continue reading...Four years of failed rains in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia have left the region facing catastrophe this year
The number of people at risk of starvation in the drought-ravaged Horn of Africa has increased to 22 million, the UN’s world food programme (WFP) says.
Years of insufficient rainfall across Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia have caused the worst drought in 40 years and conditions akin to famine in the hardest-hit areas, aid groups say.
Continue reading...