Following a peace agreement signed in early November to end the fighting in the northern Ethiopian province, a convoy of medical aid, the first since late August, arrived Tuesday (November 15) in the capital of Tigray, according to the ICRC.
“The first ICRC medical supplies have just arrived in Mekele (…) by road,” Jude Fuhnwi, spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Ethiopia.
After a five-month ceasefire, most of the already mostly insufficient humanitarian aid to Tigray was halted when hostilities resumed at the end of August between the rebel authorities in Tigray and the federal army and its allies.
Two “trucks have delivered 40 tonnes of essential medical equipment, emergency medicines, and surgical supplies” to health facilities in the region “to treat the most urgent cases,” the ICRC said in a statement.
“Although some health facilities in Tigray are no longer functioning, those still open lack basic medicines and equipment and other essential supplies,” the organization said.
“The ICRC hopes to continue these deliveries on a regular basis and significantly increase the humanitarian response in Tigray,” whose six million inhabitants have been largely deprived of food and medicine for more than a year.
To put an end to a two-year bloody war in northern Ethiopia, the Ethiopian government and the rebel authorities in Tigray signed a peace deal in Pretoria on November 2.
A document to carry out the terms of the agreement, including as the disarmament of rebels and the delivery of humanitarian goods to Tigray, was also initialed on Saturday by military leaders from both sides.
