The head of the World Health Organization warned on Monday that renewed violence in northern Ethiopia is pushing the region’s health system closer to collapse. Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said reports of attacks on civilians in the Amhara and Tigray regions were deeply disturbing, and that children, including a newborn, were among those killed at a displacement camp in Amhara.
Rescue sources told Reuters that at least 15 people died in Friday’s drone strikes on the Jaari 2 displacement camp. Addis Standard, which has reported the northern strikes in detail, put the camp attack on October 29 at at least 16 killed and 22 injured, and reported a further strike on October 30 in Rama town in central Tigray that killed at least 12 people who had gathered around a grain truck hit by an earlier strike.
Tedros said hospitals face shortages of health workers, medicines and equipment, ambulance services are severely limited, and insecurity is obstructing delivery of medical supplies. WHO and its partners are working to move additional supplies into all affected regions, and he warned that continued fighting would cut access to emergency, maternal and child care and disease treatment.
Fighting between Ethiopian government forces and rebel groups resumed in Amhara, Tigray and Afar in September, nearly four years after the November 2022 agreement that ended the Tigray war. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called on the parties to spare civilians and critical infrastructure and agree a cessation of hostilities without delay, warning of escalation and wider destabilisation. Ethiopian authorities had not publicly responded to the WHO appeal by Monday evening.