NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) – The United Nations says the Tigray region in Ethiopia is facing a “very critical situation of malnutrition” as large rural areas where many people fled for three months of fighting remain out of reach of aid.
The UN humanitarian agency also said in a new report that Ethiopian defense forces continue to occupy a hospital in the city of Abi Adi, “preventing up to 500,000 people from accessing health services” in a region where the sanitary system has largely fallen under looting and artillery fire.
Alarms are growing over the fate of the nearly 6 million people in the Tigray region, as fighting seems to be as fierce as ever between Ethiopian and allied forces and those supporting the now fugitive Tigray leaders, who once they dominated the government of Ethiopia.
“The needs are huge, but we cannot pretend that we do not see or hear what is unfolding,” Ethiopian President Sahle-Work Zewde said in a statement on Friday after visiting Tigray’s capital, Mekele.
In one of the Ethiopian government’s most outspoken public comments, however, he noted “the significant delays that still remain to reach the people who need it.”
Ethiopia said on Friday that humanitarian aid has reached 2.7 million people in Tigray. But the UN report considers the current response to be “drastically inadequate”, although some progress is being made.
With 80% of the population still inaccessible, according to the Ethiopian Red Cross earlier this month, fears are growing that more people will starve to die.
“The coming weeks are crucial in preventing famine,” Germany’s foreign ministry said in a brief statement last week after hearing reports of a European Union envoy’s visit to Ethiopia.
The new UN report released on Friday says that even in areas where it can be reached, a screening of 227 children under the age of 5 showed “surprisingly high malnutrition”, although it did not mention the number of cases.
It is also said that more than 3,500 children were detected with 109 with severe acute malnutrition. The World Health Organization describes this condition as “when a person is extremely thin and at risk of dying.”
“Malnutrition (in Tigray) is expected to deteriorate, as households are limited to eating every day,” the UN report says.
The Tigray conflict began at a vulnerable time, just before harvest and after months of a regional locust outbreak. Most of the population are subsistence farmers.
The UN report cites “bureaucratic obstacles” and the presence of “several armed actors” as complications in the delivery of aid.
Humanitarian workers have described trying to navigate a mosaic of authorities that include those in the neighboring Amhara region who have settled in some Tigray communities, as well as soldiers from neighboring Eritrea. whom witnesses have accused of widespread looting and crop burnings.
The Ethiopian government denies the presence of Eritrean soldiers, although the interim government in the Tigray region has confirmed this and accused them of looting food aid, according to a recent Voice of America interview.
The UN report describes a “terrible” situation in which “COVID-19 services have stopped” in the Tigray region, in some cases displaced people sleep 30 people in a single classroom and host communities they are under “incredible tension.”