Thread by @Telegraph

The UN’s humanitarian chief has told the @telegraph that starvation is being used as a weapon of war in Ethiopia and, if there's no ceasefire, the country could repeat the devastating famine of the 1980s

Thread ⬇️
telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/0…

@UNReliefChief implored both sides in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray Region to agree to an immediate ceasefire or face one of the greatest tragedies of this century

“People need to wake up"

"There is now a risk of a loss of life running into the hundreds of thousands or worse"

“Businesses have been destroyed. The economy has been destroyed. Crops have been destroyed. Farms have been destroyed. There are no banking services anymore; there are no telecommunications services anymore”

Mr Lowcock said food aid was being blocked in particular by Eritrean forces also operating in Tigray

telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/0…

“We are hearing of starvation-related deaths already"

“The access [for aid workers] is not there because of what men with guns and bombs are doing and what their political masters are telling them to do.”

For the past six months, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and allied ethnic Amhara militias have been battling forces loyal to the Tigrayan regional government in a horrific war across the mountain scape

A fighter loyal to the Tigray People's Liberation Front, 📸AP Photo/Ben Curtis

There have been numerous potential war crimes including indiscriminate bombardment of civilian areas and ethnic cleansing

telegraph.co.uk/global-health/…

Last month we reported that civilians in Tigray had suffered horrific burns consistent with the use of white phosphorus

telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/2…

In the 1980s, Ethiopia’s Marxist dictatorship fought a scorched earth campaign against guerrilla fighters in the country’s rugged north...

The conflict combined with record low rains to create a famine that killed hundreds of thousands

Ethiopian children in a refugee camp during the 1984 famine, 📸 William Campbell/Sygma via Getty Images

Now, the World Food Programme has said that 90 per cent of Tigray’s six million people needed emergency food aid

The UK, the US, Canada, France and Germany have presented a united diplomatic front pushing for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire...

But both the UN Security Council and the African Union have yet to take a firm stance on Tigray

Mr Lowcock started his career 35 years ago, working on the famine in Ethiopia

"I find it desperately sad that one of the last things I’m having to deal with is another potential rerun of famine”

Read our interview by @_Will_Brown here: telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/0…