NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) – The Ethiopian government has privately told Biden administration officials that its Tigray region, which clashed, has “returned to normal,” but new witnesses describe terrified Tigray residents hiding in bullet-proof houses and in a vast rural area where there are effects of fighting and food shortages are still unknown.
The conflict that began in November between Ethiopian forces and those in the Tigray region that dominated the government for nearly three decades remains largely in the shadows. Some communication links are cut off, residents are afraid to give details over the phone and almost all journalists are blocked. Thousands of people have died.
Ethiopian Deputy Prime Minister Demeke Mekonnen and colleagues reported on Friday a private meeting organized by the Atlantic Council think tank. Nearly 1.5 million people have been treated in Tigray with humanitarian aid and expressed displeasure over “false and politically motivated accusations” of mistreating refugees in neighboring Eritrea, affiliate Fana Broadcasting Corporate reported in the state. It was said that Biden administration staff attended the meeting.
The refugees have been attacked by Eritrean soldiers, who are fighting alongside Ethiopian troops against Tigray forces. Biden administration has pressured Eritrea to withdraw “immediately” them, citing credible accounts of looting, sexual assault and other abuses.
Despite recent claims by Ethiopia, its newly appointed administrators in Tigray have estimated that more than 4.5 million people, or close to the entire population of the region, need emergency food aid and some people have begun to die. of fam. According to leaked documents from a crisis meeting of government workers and attendance in early January.
And a new account from an emergency coordinator for Médecins Sans Frontières in Tigray, Albert Vinas, says that “we are very concerned about what might happen in rural areas”, with many places inaccessible due to the struggle or the difficulties. to obtain permission.
“But we know, because the elders of the community and the traditional authorities have told us, that the situation in these places is very bad,” he said in the account posted online Friday.
He described Tigray residents handing out scraps of paper to colleagues with phone numbers and asking for help reaching their families, of whom they had known nothing for weeks.
“We saw a population locked in at home and living in great fear,” he wrote after visiting the town of Adigrat and the towns of Axum and Adwa in late December.
In Adigrat, one of the largest cities in Tigray, “the situation was very tense and his hospital was in a terrible state,” Vinas added, “without food, water or money. Some patients who had been admitted with traumatic injuries were malnourished. ”A woman had been in labor for a week.
Beyond hospitals, up to 90 percent of health centers between the capital Tigray, Mekele, and Axum in the north, toward Eritrea, were down, he said. “There is a large population suffering, probably with fatal consequences. … There have been no vaccines in almost three months, so we fear there will be epidemics soon. “
In a separate account published by the World Peace Foundation on Friday, former Ethiopian official Mulugeta Gebrehiwot Berhe in a telephone interview in rural Tigray told director Alex de Waal that “hunger among peasants is paralyzing” in the areas borders with Eritrea after Eritrean forces burned or looted crops just before harvest.
“Soon, we could see a massive humanitarian crisis,” Mulugeta said.
Eritrean officials have not answered questions or confirmed the involvement of their soldiers, and Ethiopia has denied their presence despite witnesses.
The food situation in Tigray was already “extremely bad” before fighting broke out over a locust outbreak and the COVID-19 pandemic, Oxfam’s country director in Ethiopia Gezahegn Kebede Gebrehana told The Associated Press .
“When the fighting took place, many people fled to the bush. But when they returned, most found their homes destroyed or all belongings looted, “he said after an assessment south of Tigray, according to some accounts, the most accessible part of the region.” Food is a necessity. very, very important, from what we saw. “
International pressure on Ethiopia to allow unrestricted humanitarian access to Tigray continues, now a complicated mosaic of local authorities, but Gezahegn warned of suspending aid to the government as a European Union Recently.
“The donor community might think it will push the Ethiopian government, but the Ethiopian government will never give up,” he said. He acknowledged the “good intentions” but said “they are the people who suffer”.