The Ethiopian government on Friday said that 70 percent of the war-hit northern region of Tigray was now under the control of the federal army and that aid was being sent into the region, reported The Barron’s.
“70% of Tigray is under ENDF (Ethiopian National Defence Force),” Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s national security adviser Redwan Hussein posted on Twitter.
He said that aid was flowing like no other times in Tigray. He added that trucks of food and medicine had been sent to Shire and that flights were being allowed into the area.
The restoration of aid to the Tigray region, which is home to about six million people, is one of the key points of a breakthrough peace deal between the federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) to end two years of war in northern Ethiopia.
Notably, Tigray and its neighbouring regions are in the grip of a severe humanitarian crisis due to lack of food and medicine, and there is limited access to basic services including electricity, banking and communications.
The Tigrayan rebels, however, have denied the Ethiopian national security adviser’s claims.
“He is plucking his facts out of thin air,” TPLF spokesman Getachew Reda told AFP in a message.
The peace deal signed in the South African capital Pretoria on November 2 calls for the cessation of hostilities, restoration of humanitarian aid, the re-establishment of federal authority over Tigray and the disarming of TPLF fighters.
On Wednesday, the World Health Organization (WHO) also reiterated calls for a massive influx of food and medicines into Tigray following the ceasefire deal, saying desperately-needed aid had not yet been allowed in.
“Many people are dying from treatable diseases. Many people are dying from starvation,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who hails from Tigray, told a press conference.
He warned that it was already a week on and nothing is moving in terms of food aid or medicines in the Ethiopian city.
