The United Nations has sounded the alarm over the severe effect of food shortages on the nearly 100,000 Eritrean refugees sheltering in camps in Ethiopia’s restive Tigray region.
Wednesday marks a month since Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced a military operation against forces loyal to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which ruled the northern region of six million people neighbouring Eritrea. Communications and transport links to Tigray have since been severed, and the UN and humanitarian agencies have pleaded for access to deliver badly needed food, medicines and other supplies.
“Concerns are growing by the hour,” UN refugee agency spokesman Babar Baloch told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday.
“The camps will have now run out of food supplies – making hunger and malnutrition a real danger, a warning we have been issuing since the conflict began nearly a month ago. We are also alarmed at unconfirmed reports of attacks, abductions and forced recruitment at the refugee camps,” Baloch added.
Abiy, last year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, has rejected the idea of dialogue with the TPLF leaders, who are on the run but say they continue to fight even after the government over the weekend declared victory in the deadly conflict.
Source: aljazeera.com
The post Food has run out for Eritrean refugees in Tigray camps, UN warns appeared first on The Chronicle Online.
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