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The blockade and the starvation that comes with it mark a new phase in the 10-month war between Tigray forces and the Ethiopian government, along with its allies.
For months, the United Nations has warned of famine in Tigray. (AP)
In parts of Ethiopia’s Tigray region, forced starvation is the latest chapter in a conflict where ethnic Tigrayans have been massacred, gang raped and expelled. Months after crops were burned and communities stripped bare, a new kind of death has set in.
At a health center last week, a mother and her newborn weighing just 1.7 pounds died from hunger. In every district of the more than 20 where one aid group works, residents have starved to death.
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For months, the United Nations has warned of famine in this embattled corner of northern Ethiopia, calling it the world’s worst hunger crisis in a decade. Now internal documents and witness accounts reveal the first starvation deaths since Ethiopia’s government in June imposed what the UN calls “a de facto humanitarian aid blockade.”
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1Dying of hunger
At least 150 people starved to death last month in Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region amid a near-complete blockade of food aid by federal and allied authorities, the Tigray forces say, while close to half a million people face famine conditions. (AP)
2‘I just cry’
“You are killing people,” Hayelom Kebede, the former director of Tigray’s flagship Ayder Referral Hospital, recalled telling Ethiopia’s health ministry in a phone call this month. “They said, ‘Yeah, OK, we’ll forward it to the prime minister.’ What can I do? I just cry.” (AP)
3On brink of famine
More than 350,000 metric tons of food aid are positioned in Ethiopia, but very little of it can get into Tigray. The government is so wary that humanitarian workers boarding rare flights to the region have been given an unusual list of items they cannot bring: Dental flossers. Can openers. Multivitamins. Medicines, even personal ones. (AP)
4‘Skin color was beginning to change due to hunger’
In April, even before the current blockade was imposed, an aid group wrote to the donor that “reports of malnourishment are rampant,” and that 22 people in one sub-district had starved to death. “People’s skin color was beginning to change due to hunger; they looked emaciated with protruding skeletal bones,” the aid group wrote. (AP)
5As war spreads, so might hunger
There is little help coming. The UN says at least 100 trucks with food and other supplies must reach Tigray every day to meet people’s needs. But as of September 8, fewer than 500 had arrived since July on the only accessible road into the region. No medical supplies or fuel have been delivered to Tigray in more than a month, the US says, blaming “government harassment” and decisions, not the fighting. (AP)
6‘Man-made hunger’
Grim as they are, the reports of starvation deaths reflect only areas in Tigray that can be reached. One Tigrayan humanitarian worker told The Associated Press that most people live or shelter in remote places such as rugged mountains. Others are in inaccessible areas bordering hostile Eritrea or in western Tigray, now controlled by authorities from the Amhara region who bar the way to neighboring Sudan, a potential route for delivering aid. As food and the means to find it run out, the humanitarian worker said, “I am sure the people that are dying out of this man-made hunger are way more than this.” (AP)
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