Ethiopia denies blocking aid to Tigray, where WFP trucks waited for a few days to unload Reuters

Davit Endshaw

Addis Ababa (Reuters)-Ethiopia on Friday denied preventing humanitarian assistance to its northern Tigray region, where hundreds of thousands of people are facing hunger, and said it is rebuilding infrastructure and is accused of using hunger as a weapon .

The Tigray People’s Liberation Front, a provincial authority expelled by the Ethiopian army and neighbouring Eritrean army last year, returned to the regional capital Merkel this week to cheer the cheering crowd, a dramatic reversal of the eight-month war.

The Ethiopian government announced a unilateral ceasefire, which TPLF considers to be a joke. There are reports that as international pressure for all parties to retreat increases, conflicts in some places continue.

Deputy Prime Minister Demek Mekoning told diplomats in Addis Ababa: “The accusations that we are trying to kill the people of Tigray by denying humanitarian access and using starvation as a weapon of war are unreasonable.

“We have been doing everything we can to rebuild the damaged infrastructure and restore electricity, telecommunications, the Internet and banking services.”

Just before Mekelle was taken away, Reuters saw a convoy of 34 trucks — each carrying 43 tons of food aid — parked at Mai Tsebri in the town of Tigray. The blue flag of the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) hung on the rain-drenched hut.

The truck waited for four days at a checkpoint controlled by the Amhara regional forces allied with the government. In the end, they unloaded the food without reaching the area where the food was needed.

A senior diplomat in Addis Ababa told Reuters that aid has been completely blocked since TPLF took over the capital.

In a speech on Tuesday, Prime Minister Abi Ahmed said that the Tigray people need to reflect on who they choose to be their leader.

“If they cheer after we leave-although we are the ones who give them wheat-they need a period of silence,” he said.

‘Act of war’

The United Nations stated in early June that at least 350,000 people in Tigray are facing famine. The United States Agency for International Development estimated this number at 900,000 last week.

Before Abi came to power in 2018, TPLF ruled the central government for decades. His government has been fighting TPLF since the end of last year, when it accused TPLF of attacking the military base in Tigray. Thousands were killed.

TPLF spokesperson Getachew Reda told Reuters repeatedly this week that the organization condemned the government’s service shutdown as an ongoing act of war.

He accused the military and Amhara regional forces of destroying one of the three bridges across the Tekeze River on Thursday. He said the troops also damaged two other bridges, calling the damage a “deliberate effort” to ensure that aid does not reach the people of Tigray.

Getachu said Demek’s comments denied that the government was blocking aid “to face reality,” and claimed that the government had systematically destroyed infrastructure, including farm tools needed for the planting season.

The World Food Program also warned of the destruction of a bridge across Tekeze on Thursday, saying that even before that, the agency had prepared food for people in a state of famine, but it was shelved.

With the demolition of the bridge, an official from the World Food Program told reporters in Geneva on Friday: “We currently have a possible road to Tigray. This road is longer. It takes more to reach Tigray’s hard-hit areas. time.”

The World Food Program has resumed deliveries in Tigray, but is facing ongoing access issues and is “lagging behind” in providing supplies to people facing hunger, said its emergency coordinator Tommy Thompson.

He said via a satellite phone from Mekelle that fighting continued in some “hot zones” and his 35 staff were “trapped” in the hostilities.

“The World Food Programme only suspended operations for about 48 hours, and we soon started operating in the northwest, which may reach approximately 40,000 people by the end of this weekend,” he said at a briefing in Geneva.

But Thompson said he was “cautiously optimistic” that an air bridge may be built in the next few days to speed up aid delivery.

Government official Redwan Hussein told reporters that the airspace will be opened “in case the UN aircraft needs transportation assistance.”

But he added that once the plane lands in Tigray: “The government will not be held responsible for anything that happens on the ground, because the opportunity is now closed.”