The United Nations (UN) humanitarian agency head for Ethiopia on Friday said that his organization is hopeful that it can resume aid deliveries into Ethiopia’s war-embattled Tigray region soon following a peace deal agreed between combatants, but some remote areas remain off-limits, reported The Reuters.
The statement comes after Ethiopia and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) agreed on Wednesday to a permanent cessation of hostilities.
The peace deal followed two years of war that has killed thousands, displaced millions and left half of Tigray’s population in severe need of food.
After fighting resumed between the two factions in August ending a previous ceasefire, the UN said it has effectively been blocked from sending in aid to the affected region. The federal government has repeatedly denied blocking aid.
Michel Saad, the head of the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) for Ethiopia, told Reuters that U.N. agencies have been in talks with the federal and Tigrayan authorities since late October about resuming aid convoys into Tigray and those conversations have intensified since the truce.
Saad said so far the UN has been getting feedback and good assurances but it is still waiting for the final go-ahead. He said the humanitarian organization is taking some small steps but in the right direction.
“I’m hopeful it’s going to be days,” the OCHA head said.
Saad added that the UN agencies had been gathering supplies and they needed 24-48 hours to get aid moving once they got the green light.
On Tuesday, the OCHA said in an update that supplies are lacking to treat more than 25,500 severely malnourished children in Tigray.
Last month, the Ethiopian federal government communication service said in a statement that it was coordinating with humanitarian agencies to continue providing humanitarian aid in urban areas where it had recently taken control.
