Starvation leaves almost 400 Ethiopians dead, says national ombudsman

Nearly 400 people have lost their lives from starvation in Ethiopia’s Tigray and Amhara regions in recent months, the national ombudsman said Tuesday, a rare admission of hunger-related deaths by a federal body.

The ombudsman office of Ethiopia has dispatched experts to the drought-affected regions, which are suffering from severe drought and also recovering from a destructive civil war that officially ended 14 months ago. Their findings revealed that 351 individuals have succumbed to starvation in Tigray over the last six months, with an additional 44 deaths in Amhara.

Only a small fraction of needy people in Tigray are receiving food aid, according to an aid memo seen by The Associated Press, more than one month after aid agencies resumed deliveries of grain following a lengthy pause over theft.

Just 14% of 3.2 million people targeted for food aid by humanitarian agencies in Tigray this month had received it by Jan. 21, according to the memo by the Tigray Food Cluster, a group of aid agencies co-chaired by the U.N.’s World Food Program and Ethiopian officials.  

The memo urges humanitarian groups to “immediately scale up” their operations, warning that “failure to take swift action now will result in severe food insecurity and malnutrition during the lean season, with possible loss of the most vulnerable children and women in the region.”