NAIROBI — The United States is warning that food aid will run out this week for millions of hungry people under a blockade imposed by Ethiopia’s government on the embattled Tigray region.
Samantha Power, the administrator of the US Agency for International Development, said in a statement late Thursday that less than 7% of the needed food aid has been reaching the Tigray region of some 6 million people, and USAID and other aid groups “have depleted their stores of food items warehoused in Tigray” after nine months of war.
“This shortage is not because food is unavailable, but because the Ethiopian Government is obstructing humanitarian aid and personnel, including land convoys and air access,” she said.
USAID has warned that up to 900,000 people in Tigray face famine conditions in what has been called the world’s worst hunger crisis in a decade. The Associated Press has reported that scores of people have starved to death.
Ethiopia’s government, on the defensive after Tigray forces retook much of the region in June, has accused humanitarian workers of arming and supporting the fighters, and aid workers have described intense searches and confiscation of personal medication, cash and communications equipment as they try to enter the region on rare convoys or flights.
The government also suspended the operations of Doctors Without Borders’ Dutch section and the Norwegian Refugee Council, accusing them of spreading “misinformation.”
A spokeswoman for Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, Billene Seyoum, did not respond to a request for comment on Power’s remarks, which came shortly after United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters that humanitarian conditions in Ethiopia are now “hellish.”
Guterres called for an immediate cease-fire, unrestricted aid access, the return of basic services and the creation of conditions for an Ethiopian-led dialogue.
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