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Addis Ababa (AFP)
The United Nations pleaded with Ethiopia on Tuesday to allow aid for long-standing refugee camps in the northern region of Tigray, where nearly 100,000 people from neighboring Eritrea are believed to have run out of food.
The appeal came as dissident leaders in Tigray claimed that new fighting was taking place in other parts of the region, which could undermine Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s claim to have ended the conflict.
It also came when some Tigray residents reported that communications had been partially restored after a long blackout.
Abiy, winner of last year’s Nobel Peace Prize, announced military operations in Tigray on November 4, a move he said was a response to attacks by the regional ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), against federal military camps.
After more than three weeks of fighting that left thousands dead and tens of thousands of people fled to neighboring Sudan, Abiy declared victory Saturday night, although the TPLF vowed to keep fighting.
Since the conflict began, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, has had no humanitarian access to four camps in Tigray that have been in operation for more than a decade and host some 96,000 Eritrean refugees.
Addressing journalists in Geneva on Tuesday, UNHCR spokesman Babar Baloch said Eritrean refugees “desperately needed” help.
“The worries increase by the hour,” Baloch said.
The food stocks available to the refugees, many of whom fled Eritrea’s authoritarian rule, were not expected to last beyond the beginning of this week.
“The fields will now have run out of food, making hunger and malnutrition a real danger, a warning we have been issuing since the conflict began,” Baloch said.
“UNHCR calls on the Ethiopian government to continue to fulfill its responsibility to host and protect Eritrean refugees and to allow humanitarian workers access to people who now desperately need it.”
– Refugee fears for safety –
The Ethiopian Agency for Refugee and Returned Affairs believes there is a “cushion” of food supplies that will last the entire week, Deputy Director General Eyob Awoke told AFP on Tuesday.
But the agency has had no contact with the camps due to communications disruption and has yet to visit them, Eyob said.
UNHCR’s Baloch also expressed alarm at unconfirmed reports of attacks, kidnappings and forced recruitment in the camp.
These abuses were allegedly committed by Eritrean soldiers who were fighting alongside Ethiopian federal troops. Ethiopia has denied having had Eritrea’s military support in the conflict.
Eyob said his agency did not have “detailed information” on the reported attacks.
Meanwhile, in Sudan, nearly 46,000 refugees fleeing the Ethiopian conflict have already been registered, Baloch said, including more than 2,500 on Friday.
He said newly arrived refugees reported seeing more checkpoints on roads from Ethiopia to Sudan, forcing them to take other routes.
– Some communications come back –
Abiy has resisted calls for mediation in the conflict, saying that the TPLF leaders must be disarmed and detained.
Tigrayan chief Debretsion Gebremichael told AFP on Monday that his forces will continue to fight “as long as these invaders are on our land.”
The regional capital, Mekele, has been under federal control since Saturday night.
Debretsion said fighting continued Tuesday in at least three locations, two of which were “around Mekele” and another near the city of Wukro, 50 kilometers (31 miles) to the north.
The communications blackout has made it impossible to verify the claims of both sides about how the fight is going.
But on Tuesday, AFP was able to contact residents of three cities in western Tigray, indicating that communications had been at least partially restored.
“Yes, the phone network and mobile data are back since Sunday afternoon at 5 in the afternoon, but only for the towns from Gondar to Humera,” said Tewodros Gebreselassie, a resident of Humera.
“Some families that were separated during the war are connected again. It is solving many problems. However, it is still a problem for the areas that have no connection. And we still lack electricity.”
A spokesperson for Ethio Telecom, Ethiopia’s monopoly telecommunications provider, said it could not provide information about the service in Tigray.
A spokeswoman for the Abiy office did not respond to a request for comment.
Also on Tuesday, the Abiy government announced that a senior TPLF member and former speaker of the upper house of parliament “surrendered to the federal forces.”
Keria Ibrahim resigned from her post in June after lawmakers approved of postponing the national elections due to the coronavirus pandemic.
© 2020 AFP
