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The first international aid convoy carrying medicines and relief supplies arrived in Mekelle, the capital of the Tigray region in northern Ethiopia, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) reported.
In a statement on Saturday, the ICRC said the convoy of the Geneva-based group and the Ethiopian Red Cross (ERCS) was dispatched in coordination with the Ethiopian authorities.
Seven Red Cross trucks carried medicine and medical equipment for 400 wounded, as well as relief supplies. These supplies will be donated to Ayder Hospital, Regional Health Office and ERCS pharmacy in Mekelle.
“It is the first international aid to arrive in Mekelle since fighting broke out in Tigray more than a month ago,” the statement said.
The aid trucks managed to enter the region amid international calls for greater transparency in the month-long fighting between Ethiopian forces and those of the fugitive Tigray regional government believed to have killed thousands, including civilians.
Human rights groups have documented at least one large-scale massacre, and others are feared.
“Doctors and nurses have been forced to make impossible decisions about which services to continue and which services to cut, after weeks without new supplies, running water and electricity,” said Patrick Youssef, ICRC regional director for Africa, after a visit to Addis. Ababa.
“This medical consignment will inject new stock, help patients and reduce those impossible life-and-death selection decisions.”
Youssef said the federal Health Ministry also delivered medical supplies to the Mekelle health facilities.
“The supplies will make an immediate and vital difference for people who do not have access to health care today,” Youssef said. “We hope that many healthcare facilities in Tigray will face the same challenges as Ayder Hospital and urgently need support.”
Call for transparency
The Tigray region remains largely isolated from the world with food and medicine that the six million people desperately need; now one million are believed to be displaced.
The lack of transparency, with the majority of communication and transportation links cut, complicates efforts to verify the claims of the conflicting parties.
It also hides the scope of the atrocities feared to have been committed since Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced on November 4 that clashes with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which dominated the Ethiopian government, had begun. for almost 30 years before he came to power and marginalized him. .
Each government now considers the other to be illegal, as the TPLF opposes the postponement of the national elections until next year due to the COVID-19 pandemic and considers Abiy’s term to have expired.
The aid trucks had been ready for days, but the Ethiopian government has repeatedly opposed what it calls external “interference” of dialogue efforts to deliver aid, based on its history as the rare, never-colonized African country, a source of deep national pride.
In neighboring Sudan, nearly 50,000 Ethiopian refugees are now sheltering. Some are reluctant to be transferred to a camp far from the border in the hope that they can find missing relatives, separated by the fighting.
Meanwhile, the United Nations said on Friday that it has been unable to reach four refugee camps that house nearly 100,000 Eritreans in Tigray.
The UN and human rights groups have expressed growing alarm over the plight of Eritrean refugees caught up in the Ethiopian conflict, warning that their safety and survival are at great risk.
The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said it had received “an overwhelming number of disturbing reports” of refugees killed or abducted and forcibly returned to Eritrea, which borders the Ethiopian region of Tigray.
“If confirmed, these actions would constitute a major violation of international law,” said Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
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