Ethiopia's government declares 'indefinite humanitarian truce'

It says it hopes to hasten the delivery of vital emergency aid to the Tigray region and provide for thousands facing starvation

Amhara militia fighters gather in the village of Adi Arkay, 180 kilometres north-east of the city of Gondar, in Amhara region, northern Ethiopia in July, 2021. All photos: AFP

Amhara militia on patrol. The Amhara government announced that local forces would go on the offensive against rebels from northern neighbour Tigray.

Fighters from the Amhara militia rest take a break. The Amhara government said its forces would go into 'attack mode' in an effort to reverse Tigrayan gains. AFP

Fenta Tereffe, spokesman for North Gondar zone Amhara forces, in the city of Debark, 75 kilometres north-east of Gondar. Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has vowed to 'repel' attacks by Ethiopia’s enemies.

A boy shivers in the rain as drought-hit people carry sacks of maize received from an aid agency in southern Ethiopia.

Ethiopia's government on Thursday declared “an indefinite humanitarian truce effective immediately”, saying it hoped to hasten the delivery of emergency aid into the Tigray region, where hundreds of thousands face starvation.

“To optimise the success of the humanitarian truce, the government calls upon the insurgents in Tigray to desist from all acts of further aggression and withdraw from areas they have occupied in neighbouring regions,” the government said in a statement.

The government said Tigray’s forces must reciprocate the truce for the situation to improve in the region and called for further humanitarian support.

“The government calls upon the donor community to redouble their generous contributions to alleviate the situation and reiterates its commitment to work in collaboration with relevant organisations to expedite the provision of humanitarian assistance to those in need.”

Nearly 40 per cent of the people in Tigray, a region of six million people, face “an extreme lack of food”, the UN said in January, with fuel shortages forcing aid workers to deliver medicines and other crucial supplies by foot.

Dubai sent two flights carrying humanitarian aid to Sudan and Ethiopia to help tackle health, refugee and flood crises.

The two Boeing 747 cargo flights have reached their respective destinations of Khartoum and Addis Ababa.

Both flights were facilitated by the International Humanitarian City in Dubai.

More than nine million people need food aid across Afar, Amhara and Tigray, according to the UN's World Food Programme.

But humanitarian organisations have been forced to increasingly curtail activities because of fuel and supply shortages.

“WFP operations in the Tigray region have ground to a halt, with only emergency fuel stocks and less than 1 per cent of the required food stocks remaining,” the agency said this week.

A TPLF push into Afar has worsened the situation, driving up the need for emergency aid in the region.

The road from Afar's capital, Semera, to Tigray's capital Mekele is the only operational land route into Tigray, where the UN estimates hundreds of thousands are living in famine-like conditions.

The government previously declared a “unilateral ceasefire” in Tigray in June last year, after the TPLF mounted a shock comeback and retook the region from federal forces.

But fighting intensified in the second half of 2021, with the rebels at one point claiming to be within 200 kilometres of the capital Addis Ababa, before reaching a stalemate.

The conflict in northern Ethiopia began in November 2020 when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sent troops to disarm and detain the region's dissident leadership.

The violence has claimed thousands of lives, and both sides have been repeatedly accused of human rights violations and atrocities.

In March, UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet reported that at least 304 civilians were killed and 373 injured between late November and late February in aerial bombardments apparently carried out by the Ethiopian military.