Jul 27. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Around two million people are at risk of starvation in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, the scene of a war between 2020 and 2022 between the Ethiopian army, allied militias and allied Eritrean forces against the armed wing of the regional authorities that has left between 100,000 and 600,000 dead, according to estimates by the Ethiopian government and the African Union.
In a post-war investigation by the BBC, the head of the Tigray Disaster Management Commission, Gebrehiwet Gebregzabher, said that around 2.1 million people could die during the low harvest season due to drought.
Satellite images collected by the BBC reveal that reservoirs and the farmland they help irrigate have dried up because there was no rain last year and now need to be replenished with seasonal rainfall if farmers are to have any hope of a successful season later.
If the rains do not arrive in the coming weeks, authorities fear a humanitarian catastrophe in an area still devastated by the conflict between the army and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).
However, the Ethiopian government has assured the BBC that these concerns are exaggerated. The head of the National Commission for Disaster Management, Shiferaw Teklemariam, has indicated that “there is no imminent danger of famine or starvation in Tigray, or anywhere else in Ethiopia.”
Shiferaw added that government officials were “doing their utmost” to address the challenges facing the country and that priority would continue to be given to the “neediest beneficiaries.”
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