Hunger kills hundreds after US and UN pause food aid to Ethiopia’s Tigray region, officials say

Local officials and researchers say hunger has killed at least 700 people in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region in recent weeks after the United States and United Nations suspended food aid.

Hunger has killed at least 700 people in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region in recent weeks after the United States and the United Nations paused food aid, local officials and researchers say.

The U.N. and the U.S. first suspended food aid to Tigray in March after the discovery of a scheme to steal donated wheat intended for needy people. They extended the pause to the rest of Ethiopia in early June, affecting 20 million people in need, or about one-sixth of the country’s population.

The figure includes 350 hunger deaths in the northwest zone of Tigray, which hosts thousands of people displaced by a two-year conflict in the region that ended in November. In mid-March, U.S. aid officials found enough food aid for 134,000 people for sale in a local market in Shire, the zone’s biggest town.