The WFP denounces a looting of 570,000 liters of fuel in Tigray by the TPLF

Aug. 25 (EUROPA PRESS) –

The executive director of the World Food Program (WFP), David Beasley, has denounced that the Popular Front for the Liberation of Tigray (TPLF) has stolen nearly 570,000 liters of fuel from a WFP warehouse in the capital, Mekelle.

Beasley has pointed out that if there is no fuel to deliver food in the region “thousands will starve”, and has condemned the event as “outrageous” and “shameful”. “We demand the return of this fuel now”, she has specified in her Twitter profile.

In the same terms, the European Commissioner for Crisis Management, Janez Lenarcic, has spoken, who has requested this Thursday “a prompt return of the fuel stolen from the World Food Program.” “Without fuel, food delivery in Tigray is not possible. The lives of millions depend on it,” he said on his official Twitter profile.

For his part, the spokesman for the United Nations Secretary-General, Stéphane Dujarric, explained that the WFP team on the ground tried unsuccessfully to prevent the looting of at least 12 tanker trucks, a loss that “will affect the humanitarian operations that support to communities throughout northern Ethiopia.

“These fuel reserves were to be used solely for humanitarian purposes, for the distribution of food, fertilizer and other emergency relief items,” the spokesman for the United Nations Secretary-General, Stéphane Dujarric, explained at a press conference.

For this reason, it has condemned “any looting or confiscation of humanitarian assets or humanitarian facilities”, while calling on all parties “to comply with their obligations under Humanitarian Law and respect the personnel, activities, goods and humanitarian goods”.

The Tigray region is virtually cut off by military forces, limiting humanitarian aid delivery in an area where more than two million people require assistance. Cuts in the supply of electricity or telecommunications have also been imposed.

On a more positive note, Dujarric stressed this Thursday at a press conference that a second batch arrived on August 20 with 840 tons of fertilizer to help farmers during the planting season.

The High Representative for Foreign Policy of the EU, Josep Borrell, called on Wednesday to the Government of Ethiopia and the TPLF rebels to lower the tension before the current escalation of confrontations “leads again into a large-scale war”.

The EU thus joined the calls for calm that the UN and the African Union have also made throughout the day, after the warring parties warned of the resumption of hostilities in northern Ethiopia.