The Red Cross reaches Tigray where the UNHCR is concerned about the fate of the refugees
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The International Committee of the Red Cross has finally been able to reach Tigray. The dissident province of northern Ethiopia is in the grip of a serious humanitarian crisis caused by the war between the federal army and the TPLF’s separatist forces.
as reported from Addis Ababa,Noé Rochet-Bodin
A total of seven trucks with medical equipment arrived this Saturday, December 12, in Mekele, the capital of Tigrayan, more than a month after the outbreak of hostilities.
The convoy carried drugs and medical supplies to treat more than 400 wounded as well as objects for the treatment of common and chronic diseases. The support is intended for Ayder Hospital, Mekele’s largest hospital, the Regional Health Bureau and the Ethiopian Red Cross pharmacy in the city.
However, Tigray is still an inaccessible region, as are the camps in the region, which house about 100,000 Eritrean refugees. A situation that worries international organizations, especially as the authorities in Addis Ababa decided on Friday 11 December to return to the refugees who managed to escape from the fighting in Tigray. “We are really very concerned about the fate of the Eritrean refugees in Tigray, especially as we still cannot access it,” said Chris Melzer, a spokesman for the UNHCR, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
The first problem is the food reserves that expired at the end of November-beginning of December. Today is December 12, so there has probably been no food in the camp for ten days or so. We also know that hundreds if not thousands of Eritrean refugees managed to reach Addis Ababa to escape the fighting. But there are 96,000 Eritreans in our four camps in Tigray, today we have no idea where they are, and that scares us very much. That is why we continue to press for access to the province and give them help. But we still have no way to get there right now ”.
According to AFP, Eritrean refugees who have managed to escape to Sudan accuse Ethiopian and Eritrean troops of raiding Eritrean refugee camps in Tigray.
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