Ethiopia: status quo in Tigray despite the declared humanitarian truce

Fighters from the Tigray rebel forces in Ethiopia, June 2021. (Illustration).

AFP - YASUYOSHI CHIBA

Text by: RFI Follow

1 min

Five days have passed since the “indefinite humanitarian truce” decreed by the government last Thursday.

Five days that have not yet seen a single aid truck enter Tigray, nor a flight land in Mekelle, the capital of the state at war.

And now, it is military movements that attract the attention of observers.

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Nothing had been prepared

, which took the African mediators of the conflict and the humanitarian agencies by surprise.

Of the 700 trucks that would be needed daily for the survival of the Tigrayans, not one has moved.

All access roads to the province are still blocked.

In reality, it seems that the situation is rather close to the status quo.

The analysis institute Eurasia Group evokes, him, an “ 

 ” between the belligerents, in a context always very tense.

“ Very worrying

 ”

military movements 

Ethiopia has indeed demanded, with the truce, the withdrawal of Tigrayan fighters from Amhara and Afar territories, where nothing of the sort has happened and where clashes have continued.

And the Tigrayans, for their part, said they

with caution, only so that food aid reaches Tigray, which has not been the case.

And they also stressed the urgency of restoring telephone and banking services.

Moreover, it is rather around thirty buses loaded with reinforcements of soldiers who have been spotted moving on the road leading to Tigray from the south in recent days, raising fears of a resumption of hostilities.

" 

 " in putting hope in the truce, ironically

, stressing that the military movements observed were " 

 ".

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• Ethiopia