Food convoy heads to Ethiopia's Tigray, 1st since December
Source: AP
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) — A convoy of trucks carrying food aid entered territory controlled by fighters loyal to the fugitive leaders of Ethiopia’s Tigray region on Friday, the first humanitarian convoy to do so since Dec. 14, the U.N. World Food Program said.
The arrival of the trucks came eight days after Ethiopia’s federal government declared an immediate humanitarian truce. The U.N. estimates that 90% of Tigray’s 6 million people are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance. It says 100 trucks must enter every day to feed people there.
“WFP-led convoys to Tigray are back on the road & making steady progress,” the agency tweeted. It added that the trucks “arrived in Erepti” carrying over 500 metric tons of food supplies “for communities on edge of starvation.”
Erepti is a district in the neighboring state of Afar, into which the war has spilled in recent months. Fighters loyal to the outlawed party of Tigray’s leaders — the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF — are present in six districts in Afar, having entered the region in December.
FILE - Workers clean the floor as sacks of food earmarked for the Tigray and Afar regions sits in piles in a warehouse of the World Food Programme (WFP) in Semera, the regional capital for the Afar region, in Ethiopia on Feb. 21, 2022. A convoy of trucks carrying food aid entered territory controlled by fighters loyal to the fugitive leaders of Ethiopia's Tigray region on Friday, April 1, 2022, the first humanitarian convoy to do so since Dec. 14, the United Nations World Food Program said. (AP Photo, File)
Read more: https://apnews.com/article/africa-united-nations-ethiopia-humanitarian-assistance-cad1873745098bca9cdec62896f2a059
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