![A farmer ploughs a field with oxen in Tigray, August 2013 (Rod Waddington, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0) [file photo]](https://i0.wp.com/mereja.com/index/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/humanitarian-field-ploughing-tigray-2013-20261008121126-13bc.jpg?resize=780%2C521&ssl=1)
A farmer ploughs a field with oxen in Tigray in August 2013. Photo: Rod Waddington, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0 [file photo]
About 3.9 million people in Tigray need emergency food aid, which The New Humanitarian said is more than half the region’s population, according to a September report by the region’s disaster agency.
The New Humanitarian, which said on Thursday that a copy of the overview by the Tigray Disaster Risk Management Commission (DRMC) was shared with it, wrote, citing regional multi-agency assessments, that more than 252,500 hectares of planted crops have been scorched and that more than 3.5 million livestock face starvation and disease as pasture and water disappear. “Many households experienced complete crop failure,” the report warned. “Without continued rainfall, even minimal production cannot be expected.” The analysis said the early Azmera rains stopped almost a month early this year and that the Tsidia rains arrived more than five weeks late in the eastern and southern zones.
Because of cuts in international food aid, food distribution in Tigray now reaches only displaced people and still misses many of them, which leaves around 3.2 million people in need without food assistance, the analysis said. It added that the war which resumed in late September has cut off much of the aid effort, and that during a night of looting in Mekelle on October 4 the offices and storage depots of the DRMC were ransacked. The Organisation for Social Services, Health and Development (OSSHD) lost around 60 computers and tablets, about $1 million worth of non-food items, nearly all its vehicles and medical equipment for its clinic in Mekelle, where it had cared for around 7,000 children living with HIV or with relatives who have HIV, according to The New Humanitarian. The warehouses of REST and World Vision, two of the three main food distributors in the region, were spared.
Farhan Haq, deputy spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General, said this week that “a UN agency warehouse, as well as facilities and warehouses belonging to local and international non-governmental organizations, were looted” in Tigray, and that food, seeds, fertilizers and water pumps were lost, The Reporter wrote. “Humanitarian personnel, premises, and assets must never be targeted and must be protected at all times,” he said, without blaming any party. The New Humanitarian said the 460-kilometer road between Mekelle and Semera in the Afar region, the main aid route during the last war, was working as of October 4, according to the humanitarian analysis group ACAPS, and its analysis called for an immediate humanitarian pause so that food, medicine, fuel and cash can reach Tigray.
In the neighboring Amhara region, residents of Dejach Meda woreda in Tselemt, North Gondar zone, told DW Amharic in a report published on Tuesday that people displaced by drought have come to the woreda town but are receiving no food aid. Priest Mebratu, a resident of Ageta kebele, said that “eight people have died” since Meskerem 16 (September 26). “The people died of hunger, nothing else. There is no war in our area. It is hunger,” he told DW. Ato Eshete Bereketeab, a resident of Yeren kebele, said that “people are dying of hunger” and that grain prices have risen sharply, while Ato Dese Tefera of Kerewa kebele said the woreda administration told hungry residents “we have nothing to give,” and that most people have left for the Dima and Mai Tsebri areas. Dese said elders compare this year’s drought to the one around 1977 in the Ethiopian calendar, in the mid-1980s. DW said officials at the North Gondar zone and Amhara region disaster risk management offices did not answer its calls and messages.
UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed arrived in Addis Ababa on Thursday for a working visit, Fana Media Corporation reported, without giving details of her program. Martin Plaut, a fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, shared The New Humanitarian’s analysis on X, quoting its opening lines, which say the fighting in Tigray obscures “an equally catastrophic food crisis unfolding in the drought-hit region.” Duke Burbridge, a former peacebuilder who has been posting from Mekelle, wrote on X on Monday that a month earlier he had learned at a DRMC presentation that 3.9 million people in Tigray “are impacted by the drought and in urgent need of aid.” He posted photos of a ransacked office with scattered papers and a spent cartridge, saying he had gone to the DRMC that day and “found this,” and added, “We need a miracle in Tigray.”
Sources: