UN children’s agency on Monday warned on the effects of food insecurity on young people amid renewed reports of violence and displacement in Ethiopia’s Tigray.
UNICEF director Henrietta Fore said “UNICEF is extremely alarmed by the reported killing of over 200 people, including more than 100 children, in attacks on displaced families sheltering at a health facility and a school in Afar region on Thursday, Aug. 5.
“Crucial food supplies were also reportedly destroyed in an area that is already seeing emergency levels of malnutrition and food insecurity.”
Fore said the intensification of fighting in Afar and other areas neighbouring Tigray was disastrous for children.
She said “It follows months of armed conflict across Tigray that have placed some 400,000 people, including at least 160,000 children, in famine-like conditions.”
The agency noted that some 4 million people are in crisis or emergency levels of food insecurity in Tigray and adjoining regions of Afar and Amhara.
More than 100,000 have been newly displaced by the recent fighting, adding to the 2 million people already uprooted from their homes.
UNICEF estimates a 10-fold increase in the number of children who will suffer from life-threatening malnutrition in Tigray over the next 12 months.
It said the food insecurity and nutrition crisis were taking place amid extensive, systematic destruction of health and other services that children and communities rely on for survival.
Fore warned that the humanitarian catastrophe spreading across northern Ethiopia was being driven by armed conflict and called on all parties to end the fighting and protect children from harm.
Earlier, Tigray rebels said they had gained control of the historic city of Lalibela, a UNESCO World Heritage site, in the Amhara region.
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