Over 200 people sheltering at a health facility and school in the Afar region of Ethiopia were reported to have been killed in attacks by armed forces. This includes more than 100 children, UNICEF said in a statement released on Monday.
The conflict in Tigray, which erupted last November, continues to escalate, recently spilling over into the neighboring Afar and Amhara regions, adding more than 100,000 newly displaced people to the 2 million people already forced to flee their homes.
Food, health services targeted: Throughout the conflict, health facilities have been deliberately and systematically targeted. A previous assessment by Médecins Sans Frontières in March found that of 106 health facilities visited, only 13% were functioning normally.
The majority were damaged and looted. The government recently suspended MSF from providing health services in the country after a state agency reportedly accused the organization of disseminating “misinformation,” among other things. MSF has since denied these claims.
Severe acute malnutrition cases rise fourfold among children in Tigray
In areas that aid workers can’t reach, at least 33,000 children “are severely malnourished and face imminent death without immediate help," says UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore.
The conflict has also led to massive food insecurity, with an estimated 400,000 people living in famine-like conditions. UNICEF expects the number of children suffering from life-threatening malnutrition will increase tenfold over the next year. The agency said that during the attacks in Afar, food supplies were also destroyed.
“The food security and nutrition crisis is taking place amid extensive, systematic destruction of health and other services that children and communities rely on for survival,” UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore said in the statement.
Dire situations for those that fled: Those that fled Ethiopia, living in refugee camps in eastern Sudan, are also experiencing “increasingly dire living conditions,” according to a press release issued on Monday from the International Committee of the Red Cross. The organization said that food, clean water, shelter, and sanitation are “desperately insufficient” with an increase in cases of malnutrition, malaria, and hepatitis E.