A senior Ethiopian government official says federal government forces now control the majority of the country's northern Tigray region, following the signing of a peace deal earlier this month that provisions for the disarming of rebel fighters.
Rewdan Hussein, the national security adviser to Ethiopia’s prime minister, said Friday that “70% of Tigray” is now under the control of the federal military.
He also said that 35 trucks of food and three of medicine have reached the city of Shire in northwestern Tigray, which hosts large numbers of people displaced by the war in Tigray, adding that services “are being reconnected.”
“Aid is flowing like no other times,” said Redwan.
Spokespersons for the International Committee for the Red Cross and the World Food Program were not able to immediately confirm Redwan’s comments, which came as representatives from the federal governments in Tigray met in Nairobi to discuss the implementation of a cease-fire deal struck in South Africa on November 2.
Under the deal federal forces will take control of Tigray’s capital airports and borders. The agreement also states that the Tigray rebel forces, estimated to number around 200,000, will disarm.
On Thursday, the U.S. State Department's Bureau for African Affairs said that Ethiopians in Tigray and the nearby Amhara and Afar regions “need aid now.”
“Redwan Hussein said in Nairobi that by week’s end humanitarian aid would flow unhindered as agreed in Pretoria,” the bureau said on Twitter, adding that it was “[w]aiting urgently for actions to respect and implement the agreement.”
