NAIROBI, Kenya — Ethiopia’s government on Thursday announced what it called a “humanitarian truce” with forces it has been fighting for 17 months in the northern Tigray region, where millions are hungry and food aid has not been delivered since December.
The deadly conflict in Africa’s second most populous nation has pitted the Ethiopian military against rebels with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, or T.P.L.F. Leaders of the T.P.L.F. did not immediately respond to reports of the truce, but have accused the Ethiopian government of blocking access to aid to the region.
In announcing the unilateral truce, effective immediately, the Ethiopian government said it was acting because thousands of people from Tigray had begun flooding into bordering regions seeking help.
“While it is heartening to see the fraternal bond and solidarity that is being demonstrated by communities that are receiving and helping those in need of assistance, the Government believes that the situation warrants urgent measures to ensure that those in need are able to receive aid in their localities,” the government said in a statement on Twitter and on Facebook.
The war in Ethiopia, which began in November 2020, has left thousands dead, has forced more than two million people from their homes and has been the focus of massive human rights abuses, including ethnic cleansing, massacres and sexual violence.
More than 9 million people are in need of food assistance in Tigray and the neighboring Afar and Amhara regions, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Three-quarters of the population in Tigray are now “using extreme coping strategies to survive,” the U.N. humanitarian office said in a report this month.
The government said it will work with aid groups to speed up the delivery of food and water to those in need. It added that it hoped the truce will facilitate an end to the conflict, and called on the Tigrayan fighters to “desist from all acts of further aggression and withdraw from areas they have occupied in neighboring regions.”
The Tigray People’s Liberation Front and the Tigray External Affairs Office, which is in charge of the Tigray government’s official communications, did not immediately reply to requests for comment.
The announcement came just days after David Satterfield, the U.S. special envoy for the Horn of Africa, visited senior officials in Ethiopia and pushed for the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Tigray Region.
This is not the first time that the Ethiopian government has declared a unilateral cease-fire in the war. It first did so last June, after the Ethiopian military was routed in Tigray and the T.P.L.F. retook Mekelle, the capital of the Tigray region. But it was not long before fighting flared up again, elsewhere, between government forces, the T.P.L.F. fighters and their allies.
