It has been nearly three months since the UN warned that 400,000 people across Tigray had "crossed the threshold into famine".  The situation has only deteriorated since then, as a de-facto blockade prevents most aid from getting in. 

Now, after months of heavy fighting and massacres that have claimed thousands of lives, doctors worry Tigray is entering a new phase of fatalities driven by the kind of widespread starvation that turned Ethiopia into a byword for famine in the 1980s. 

The cause of the crisis lies in a civil war between the national government and the regional ruling party of Tigray. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, a Nobel peace laureate, sent troops into Tigray in November to topple the regional ruling party, the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), a move he said came in response to TPLF attacks on army camps.  The fighting disrupted the harvest in a region that was already struggling to supply enough food, and some combatants made things worse by blocking and looting food aid. In a stunning about-turn in late June, the TPLF recaptured most of Tigray, including Mekele, and government forces largely withdrew. 

A mother and a newborn weighing just 1.7 pounds died from hunger at a health center last week. The government is accused of refusing to allow food and medical supplies and fuel from getting into this region, all of which is happening in a place that's in a civil war with the central government.

"It's a silent killing. People are just dying," said Dr Hayelom Kebede, research director of Ayder Referral Hospital in Tigray's capital Mekele, the region's biggest. "With starvation, the bad thing is you will see people in the throes of death, but they will not die immediately," he told AFP.

"It takes time, after their body is weakened and weakened and weakened. It's more horrific than bullet deaths." 

The International Organization for Migration, which says more than 2 million people are displaced in Tigray, noted that “hosting capacity appears to have reached its limit” by the local population who support the majority of them.

The first aid convoy in over two weeks arrived in the Tigray regional capital, Mekele, on Monday, but the World Food Program has said such a convoy of some 100 trucks is needed to arrive every day to meet the urgent needs of more than 5 million people.

Telecommunications electricity and banking services have again been cut off to Tigray since the Tigray forces retook much of the region in June. While witnesses have told the AP that access inside the region is safer and easier, they say dwindling supplies of food, fuel and cash make it increasingly impossible to help the hungry.

“Unless the fighting dies down, we can only see the situation deteriorating extensively in the next weeks or months,” WFP spokesman Gordon Weiss told the AP. “We knew that there were around 400,000 people on the edge of famine-like conditions (in Tigray) in June. We have not really managed to assess the situation since then, it has been too difficult to do so, but we can expect that that population has grown and that their conditions have deteriorated.”

The U.N., the United States and others urge the warring sides to stop the fighting and find a way to negotiate for peace, but Ethiopia’s government this year declared the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, which once dominated the national government, a terrorist group.

Sources/More: AFP, Independent

Pray: For the fighting to be replaced by peace, allowing aid and support to flow to the most needy.
Pray: For those providing aid to Ethiopia. That they may be protected and supported in their endeavours (Acts 20:35)
Pray: For those who are suffering or displaced, that they might know God’s grace, peace and presence sustaining and strengthening them.