"Starvation is a cruel way to die, as the undernourished body consumes its own organs in order to generate enough energy to keep a flicker of life.
"There is famine now in Tigray," U.N. aid chief Mark Lowcock said on Thursday after the release of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis, which the IPC noted has not been endorsed by the Ethiopian government.
"The number of people in famine conditions ... is higher than anywhere in the world, at any moment since a quarter-million Somalis lost their lives in 2011," Lowcock said.
Most of the 5.5 million people in Tigray need food aid.
Fighting broke out in the region in November between government
The violence has killed thousands of civilians and forced more than 2 million from their homes in the mountainous region.
The most extreme warning by the IPC - a scale used by U.N. agencies, regional bodies and aid groups to determine food insecurity - is phase 5, which starts with a catastrophe warning and rises to a declaration of famine in a region.
- Just one-third live in areas controlled by the Ethiopian government
- Another third are in areas occupied by the Eritrean army, which is Ethiopia's military ally, but which doesn't cooperate with humanitarian agencies
- A further 1.5 million live in rural areas controlled by the Tigrayan rebels, where aid workers cannot go and mobile-phone coverage has been shut off.
The
government says that there are only "remnants" of resistance by
Tigrayan rebels and promises it will soon be in full control. Humanitarian workers are worried that, with the summer rains now falling
across Tigray, farmers need to be busy cultivating - and they're not." France24/BBC
