The United Nations said Wednesday that Ethiopia had detained 72 drivers working for the World Food Programme (WFP) in a northern city along the only functional road leading into the famine-threatened Tigray region.
Since then Tigray has been under what the UN describes as a de facto humanitarian blockade.
Only 15 percent of necessary aid has been able to cross from Semera into Tigray since mid-July, with hundreds of thousands of people living in famine-like conditions, according to UN estimates.
Last week, the UN said no aid trucks had entered northern Ethiopia since October 18.
The movement of aid workers in and out of the region by road has been barred since October 28.
“The federal government had seven checkpoints at the beginning that have been decreased heeding to the complaints the government received from international humanitarian actors. The reason is for the safety of the Tigray and Amhara region, borders of where TPLF has been active. The government is giving 70 pc assistance to humanitarian aids although the TPLF has been weaponizing humanitarian assistant diverted to fighters.” stated PM’s Press Secretory Billene Seyoum
