Ethiopia

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At least 108 civilians have been killed by airstrikes in northern Ethiopia in the past two weeks, the United Nations (UN) said.

Some 75 others had been injured in strikes allegedly carried out by the Ethiopian air force, the UN human rights office said.

The federal government has previously denied attacking civilians in Tigray.

On Thursday, Addis Ababa asked the head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr Tedros Adhanom, to stop talking about the situation in Tigray, which he has described as "hell-like".

Dr Tedros, who comes from the region, said a blockade was preventing medicines from reaching people in the area.

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The Norwegian Nobel Committee has joined international voices calling on Ethiopia's prime minister to end the country's 14-month-long civil war.

In a statement it said Abiy Ahmed - who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 - had a special responsibility to see an end to the bloodshed.

Just a year after getting the prize for ending a long war with Eritrea, Mr Abiy sent troops to fight rebels in the northern Tigray region.

The war has forced millions from their homes. The government has been accused of blocking aid and there have been multiple allegations of atrocities being committed by all sides.

Mr Abiy’s spokesperson Billene Seyoum had previously said that the Nobel Peace Prize was not "a shackle for inaction when the country is threatened".

The calls from the Committee are expected to increase the pressure to find a peaceful resolution for the war.

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Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi has broken his silence over the military coup in neighbouring Sudan and the ongoing protests calling for civilian rule.

Egypt has faced accusations of siding with Sudan's head of military, Abdel Fattah al Burhan but President Sisi dismissed the claims.

"Just because we have not issued any public statements does not mean that we are aligned to this side or the other side," he told reporters on the sidelines of the World Youth Forum being held in Sharm el-Sheikh.

He called on both the military rulers and the protesters to embrace dialogue to end the political crisis.

Separately, he said he was disappointed by the breakdown of talks between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan over the construction of a dam on the River Nile, which has been a source of a decade-long row between the countries.

He said Egypt had always been ready to co-operate on a binding agreement before the dam becomes fully operational.

He said the country had gone to UN Security Council because a solution hadn't been found yet.

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The World Health Organization (WHO) says that despite repeated requests to the Ethiopian government, it still has no access to Tigray - where 14 months of war have created a humanitarian crisis.

A WHO senior official said he'd received letters from doctors in the northern region who had run out of basic treatments for illnesses such as diabetes.

The head of the organisation, Tedros Ghebreyesus - who is from Tigray - said the region's population of seven million had been under siege for more than a year.

He said this had created a "hell" in the region and was an "insult to our humanity to allow a situation like this to continue".

"Nowhere in the world are we witnessing hell like in Tigray," he said.

New drone strikes have killed at least 17 people in Ethiopia’s war-torn region of Tigray, aid workers have said.

The incidents follow two similar attacks on two camps last week which killed around 60 refugees and internally displaced people.

Yesterday a flour mill was hit. Most those killed in the air strike in the town of Mai Tsebri were reportedly women.

The BBC has not independently confirmed the latest reports.

While there has been a lull in fighting on the ground after Tigrayan forces retreated from neighbouring Amhara and Afar, aerial attacks have continued forcing the United Nations (UN) to suspend operations in some areas of Tigray last week.

The United Nations Children's Fund has said that attacks on displacement camps could amount to war crimes.

Both the United Nations and US President Joe Biden have raised concerns over continued aerial attacks causing civilian deaths.

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US President Joe Biden has raised concerns about civilian deaths caused by recent air strikes in Ethiopia during a call with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.

This follows reports that more than 50 displaced people were killed in an air strike in north-west Tigray on Friday.

A White House statement said the US president welcomed the release of opposition leaders and pledged support in finding a peaceful end to the war with Tigrayan rebels.

Relations have not been good between Washington and Addis Ababa where the government has been upset by repeated criticism of human rights abuses during the war with Tigrayan rebels.

The fact that Mr Biden and Mr Abiy held a phone conversation at all is perhaps a sign of progress.

The White House statement says the two leaders discussed ways to accelerate dialogue towards a negotiated ceasefire.

It also says the recent release of opposition leaders was a positive step. But the subject of atrocities was once again raised.

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Police in Kenya have arrested 91 people believed to be Ethiopian nationals suspected to be in the country illegally.

The Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) says the group was arrested at a house in Kitengela, outside Nairobi, on Sunday evening.

All are men below the age of 25, and had attempted to break out of the house where they were being held.

On Twitter, the DCI said they are believed to have been smuggled into the country onboard a lorry and were being held in the house temporarily as the smugglers sought means to sneak them to another country.

Police are searching for the persons who brought them in.

Undocumented Ethiopians are routinely arrested in Kenya every year after arriving to look for jobs or in transit to other countries.

In October, police arrested 14 Ethiopian nationals, four adults and 10 children, suspected to be in Kenya illegally.

More on this topic:

• Migrant crisis: 'I was sold three times by slave traders'
• How Ethiopia cracked down on people smugglers

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Aid agencies have suspended operations in a zone of Ethiopia's northern Tigray region where dozens of people were killed in an air strike, the UN says.

"The ongoing threats of drone strikes" left them little choice but to halt activities, the UN’s humanitarian agency Ocha has said.

Aid workers over the weekend said that 56 people had been killed and dozens more injured in an air strike on a camp for the displaced.

It came as the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) spokesman, Getachew Reda, accused Eritrea of launching fresh attacks against the group’s fighters. It has not responded to the accusations.

Ethiopian government forces, bolstered by Eritrean troops, have been fighting rebels in Tigray for more than a year in a war that has killed thousands of people.

The rebels in northern Ethiopia's Tigray region have accused neighbouring Eritrea of carrying out attacks.

The Tigray People Liberation Front's spokesperson, Getachew Reda tweeted that fresh attacks had been launched against the group's forces.

This comes days after the rebels withdrew from neighbouring regions and the Ethiopian military said it would not pursue them to their region in Tigray.

Eritrea's President Isaias Afwerki told state media over the weekend that his troops would prevent any attack on Eritrea as well as any threats to Ethiopia's stability.

Eritrean troops had been fighting alongside Ethiopia in the war against the Tigrayan rebels which broke out in November 2020. The war has since morphed into a brutal civil war.

Neither Eritrea nor the Ethiopian government has responded to the latest accusation by the rebels.

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The UN has warned that it will have to suspend operations by its aid agencies if no supplies are allowed into Ethiopia’s northern region of Tigray soon.

No humanitarian aid has reached the region since mid-December and a spokesperson for the UN chief says the humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate.

“Several UN and non-governmental organisations will be forced to cease operations if humanitarian supplies, fuel and cash are not delivered to Tigray very soon,” Stéphane Dujarric, the spokesman for the UN's secretary general, told journalists in New York.

He said aid agencies were short of cash to buy local supplies and pay local staff and were also running out of fuel to transport aid and staff.

Quote Message: Without fuel we can't move - you can't move food trucks" from Stéphane Dujarric

Without fuel we can't move - you can't move food trucks"

Renewed fighting and insecurity have affected the movement of humanitarian supplies along the only available route from Semera, the regional capital of the neighbouring Afar region, to Tigray through Abala.

The UN estimates that 100 trucks need to be getting into Tigray daily but since mid-July less 12% than of the needed trucks have made it through.

Read more:

• What's stopping aid getting to Tigray?
• Tigray hospital running out of food for starving children
• Viewpoint: Why Ethiopia's Tigray region is starving, but no famine declared

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Three Eritrean's living in a refugee camp in Ethiopia's Tigray region were killed in an airstrike on Wednesday, the UN says.

Two of the dead were children.

Several other people were injured in the attack on the Mai Aini camp.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, said refugees should never be a target.

He called on Ethiopian government forces and Tigrayan rebels to respect civilians.

Conflict in the region broke out in November 2020.

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Ethiopia has dismissed accusations by a new Human Rights Watch report that said thousands of ethnic Tigrayans deported from Saudi Arabia were facing detention and forced disappearance upon arrival.

The accusations were described as "fabrications" by a government spokesperson.

The report is part of a concerted effort to put pressure on the government, Dina Mufti at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.

“Human Rights Watch has several fictions about Ethiopia,” Mr Dina said. “This is one of those fictions.”

Rights groups have often accused authorities of profiling ethnic Tigrayans living in the capital Addis Ababa and other cities since war broke out 14 months ago in the northern part of the country.

Closures of businesses owned by Tigrayans and arbitrary detentions are some of the allegations raised against the government.

Read more: Mass arrests and ethnic profiling haunt Addis Ababa

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Medical staff in Ethiopia's war-hit Tigray region say patients - including children - are dying as a result of a blockade that's preventing medicine and other life-saving supplies from reaching hospitals.

Doctors from the region's biggest facility in Mekelle say surgeries have not been possible due to a lack of intravenous fluids and anaesthetics.

In a statement, staff at Ayder Referral Hospital say frequent electricity cuts and an irregular supply of oxygen have resulted in patient deaths while the neurosurgery team has no working scanners.

The Ethiopian government and officials from the Tigray People's Liberation Front have blamed each other for impeding the delivery of aid including medical supplies.

The UN recently said some health servcies had been halted in Tigray due to a shortage of essential drugs.

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) says the authorities in Ethiopian have lifted a five-month-long suspension on its humanitarian work.

"We look forward to resume our many years of humanitarian operations for refugees in Ethiopia," the organisation said.

The authorities in Ethiopia had suspended NRC and other humanitarian organisations over what they termed as misinformation.

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The US special envoy for the Horn of Africa, Jeffrey Feltman, will travel to Ethiopia this week to told talks with the authorities about the ongoing civil war.

The US State Department said that Mr Feltman was "to engage with senior officials regarding the prospects for a broader peace".

The rebels have in recent times withdrawn to their stronghold Tigray region in the north of Ethiopia.

The Ethiopian government said its troops would not pursue the rebels into the region.

"We do believe this offers an opportunity for both sides to halt combat operations and come to the negotiating table," State Department spokesman Ned Price said.

The special envoy's visit comes after the US removed trade privileges for Ethiopia over rights abuse claims.