Ethiopia Accuses TPLF of Blocking Humanitarian Aid Flights to Mekelle Airport
June 23 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The World Food Program (WFP) has warned this Thursday that it could run out of funds in a month due to the worsening of the humanitarian crisis in Ethiopia due to the conflict, climate change and the increase in the prices of basic products.
The agency has indicated that the country could suffer a “malnutrition crisis” due to the “serious lack” of funding for aid operations and has warned that the money allocated to the treatment of more than 1.4 million women and children seriously malnourished in the north of the country “is running out fast”.
Between January and April, the WFP was able to give aid to only 560,000 of the 1.4 million people it hoped to support, 40 percent, while rations have had to be cut for more than 700,000 refugees in the country. due to lack of funds.
In this way, the refugees receive only 50 percent of the minimum nutritional requirements, at a time when the agency hopes to reach more than eleven million people over the next six months, for which it would need to cover a hole of 470 million dollars (about 448 million euros).
Thus, it has detailed that more than thirteen million people need help in the regions of Tigray, Amhara and Afar, northern Ethiopia, due to the conflict that broke out in November 2020 between the Army and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Tigray ( TPLF), while 7.4 million people are hungry in the south and southeast of the country due to drought.
The WFP has acknowledged that humanitarian supplies have been arriving in Tigray for two months after the announcement of a truce, with more than 100,000 tons of food delivered by the agency since April 1, although it has regretted that fuel deliveries are not flowing at the same rate, undermining operations.
On the other hand, he has argued that the effects of the war between Ukraine and Russia will increase the food security crisis in Ethiopia, where three quarters of the wheat obtained by the Government and the WFP derives from these two countries, which could further raise prices.
The Ethiopian Executive has denounced this Thursday that the TPLF blocks aid flights to the airport of the capital of Tigray, Mekelle, and has stressed that the group uses the population of the region as “a propaganda weapon”, as reported the Ethiopian television network Fana.
The conflict in Ethiopia broke out in November 2020 after an attack by the TPLF against the main Army base, located in Mekelle, after which the Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, ordered an offensive against the group after months of political and administrative tensions. . A “humanitarian truce” is currently in force, although both sides have accused each other of preventing the delivery of aid.
The TPLF has accused Abiy of stirring up tensions since he came to power in April 2018, when he became the first Oromo to take office. Until then, the TPLF had been the dominant force within the ethnically based coalition that had governed Ethiopia since 1991, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). The group opposed Abiy’s reforms, seeing them as an attempt to undermine his influence.
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