Starvation haunts Ethiopia’s Tigray region

“There is an extreme urgent need — I don’t know what more words in English to use — to rapidly scale up the humanitarian response because the population is dying every day as we speak,” the head of the emergency unit for Doctors Without Borders told the AP.

Starvation is threatening the survivors of more than two months of fighting in Ethiopia’s Tigray region. Authorities say more than 4.5 million people there need emergency food.

The first humanitarian workers to arrive after pleading with the Ethiopian government for access describe weakened children dying from diarrhea, empty shops and refugees begging for something to eat, Cara Anna reports.

The specter of hunger is sensitive in Ethiopia, which transformed into one of the world’s fastest-growing economies in the decades since images of starvation there in the 1980s led to a global outcry. Drought, conflict and government denial contributed to the famine, which swept through Tigray and killed an estimated 1 million people.

The largely agricultural Tigray region of about 5 million people already had a food security problem amid a locust outbreak when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on Nov. 4 announced fighting between his forces and those of the defiant regional government.

Tigray leaders dominated Ethiopia for almost three decades but were sidelined after Abiy introduced reforms that won him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019.

Thousands of people have been killed in the conflict. More than 50,000 have fled into Sudan, where one doctor has said newer arrivals show signs of starvation. Others shelter in rugged terrain.

New satellite images of a refugee camp in the embattled Tigray region show more than 400 structures have been badly damaged in what a research group believes is the latest “intentional attack” by fighters.