{"id":838640,"date":"2026-11-01T00:20:00","date_gmt":"2026-11-01T04:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/?p=838640"},"modified":"2026-11-01T00:20:00","modified_gmt":"2026-11-01T04:20:00","slug":"people-are-dying-of-hunger-in-war-hit-wag-hemra-as-drought-deepens-in-amhara-residents-tell-dw-amharic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/838640","title":{"rendered":"People are dying of hunger in war hit Wag Hemra as drought deepens in Amhara, residents tell DW Amharic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Residents of Wag Hemra in Ethiopia’s Amhara region say people have started dying of hunger as drought and years of war leave families with no grain, no fodder and little aid.<\/p>\n

Drought has hit five districts of the Wag Hemra Nationality Administration zone, and people are dying in Sehala Seyemt district, residents told DW Amharic in a report published on Saturday. Muluken Abebaw, who lives in kebele 13 of Sehala Seyemt, said nothing was getting better and that conditions were only getting worse, with insecurity coming from every direction. He said about four people had died in one kebele.<\/p>\n

In neighboring Tsagbji district, resident Abeje Mengistie said this drought was unlike earlier ones. He compared it to 1977 in the Ethiopian calendar, the year of the great famine of 1984 and 1985, and said there was not even one sack or ten tins of sorghum left in his area. There is no fodder for the animals either, he said, and families are worried that the elderly and small children will not survive the coming month.<\/p>\n

Another resident, Yigzaw Teshome, told the broadcaster that more than 120,000 people in the two districts are exposed to the drought, and that the community has been hurt by both war and failed rains. He recalled that armed forces who were in the area earlier had demanded grain, money, goats and cattle from farmers. “Now children, the elderly and young people have all been thrown into hunger and disease,” he said, adding that there is no water and no fodder and that people feel they face death unless the government or private groups come.<\/p>\n

Eshetu Zegeye, who leads the early warning team at the Sehala Seyemt district agriculture office, said more than 66,000 people in the district are directly affected. He said the government had supplied food for only 30,000 people for one month, about 4,000 quintals, and that the office was now splitting the 15 kilogram monthly ration in half so that more families get something. “It is very dangerous,” he said, adding that about five people have died so far.<\/p>\n

The deputy commissioner of the Amhara region’s Disaster Risk Management Commission, Serkaddis Atale, gave a more hopeful account. He told DW Amharic that more than 11,000 quintals of food had been sent for more than 66,000 people in five districts hit by El Nino, namely Ziquala, Dahana, Sehala, Sekota and Gazgibla, and that most of it had arrived. He said the commission was using many trucks to deliver the aid despite delays in transport.<\/p>\n

The figures given by the district office and the regional commission do not match, and Mereja Media could not independently confirm the number of deaths. Neither account said how the fighting in the region was affecting deliveries.<\/p>\n

Wag Hemra, whose main town is Sekota, sits in the north of the Amhara region next to Tigray and Afar, and it was badly hit during the war in northern Ethiopia from 2020 to 2022. Since 2023 the Amhara region has been the scene of fighting between federal forces and Fano militias, which has closed roads, shut banks in parts of Wollo and made it hard for aid groups to move.<\/p>\n

Warnings from the zone have been building for weeks. Addis Standard wrote on X on October 23 that residents of Wag Hemra were facing severe hunger amid drought and conflict, quoting one of them as saying that “war is better than famine” had come true for them. Earlier, the news site borkena reported on X on October 19 that more than 72,000 residents of Abergele district, also in Wag Hemra, faced severe drought and food shortages.<\/p>\n

The World Food Programme said last week that drought now affects 3.5 million Ethiopians and that it does not have enough money to feed them. Residents in Sehala Seyemt said they were waiting for help, and Eshetu Zegeye said the situation in his district was getting worse every week.<\/p>\n

Sources<\/h4>\n