Ethiopia: first UN food aid convoy to Tigray since ceasefire

According to the WFP, this convoy passed through the neighboring region of Amhara. This route had not been used since a rebel offensive out of Tigray in June 2021.

The Amhara forces and militias, which supported the Ethiopian federal army against the Tigrayan rebels, have so far refused the passage of aid to Tigray, according to humanitarian sources.

"A WFP convoy has just entered (...) Tigray through the Gondar corridor (Amhara city 180 km from Tigray, editor's note), for the first time since June 2021", indicates the UN organization.

The convoy of 15 trucks is the first WFP shipment to enter Tigray since the peace agreement signed on November 2 in Pretoria by the Ethiopian government and the rebel authorities in Tigray, Claire Nevill, a security official, told AFP. word of WFP.

"Vital food aid will now be distributed in the coming days to the population of the locality of Mai Tsebri", located about 30 km inside Tigray, continues the WFP, and "food and additional medical freight will follow imminently, via all possible routes."

Military leaders from both sides on Saturday initialed a document implementing the deal, including the disarmament of rebels, the restoration of services and the "unhindered" delivery of humanitarian aid to Tigray.

The resumption of fighting after a five-month truce had interrupted at the end of August most of the delivery of humanitarian aid - already insufficient - to Tigray, almost cut off from the world and which is in dire need of food and medicine.

Before this interruption, aid convoys only took a single route through the Afar region, bordering eastern Tigray.

The toll of two years of war in northern Ethiopia is unknown. But this caused a humanitarian disaster, displacing more than two million people and plunging several hundred thousand Ethiopians into conditions close to famine, according to the UN.