Bangladesh and Ethiopia are working together to sign the Air Service Agreement (ASA) between the two countries by the end of December. EU committed to supporting gender equality in energy sector: Ambassador Charles Whiteley "Bangladesh and Ethiopia have already agreed to sign the agreement," alternative spokesperson at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Mohammad Rafiqul Alam told reporters on Sunday in a weekly media briefing. Bangladesh suggests Kosovo to import its top-quality RMG, pharmaceutical products He said the Civil Aviation Authority of Ethiopia and the Ministry of Civil Aviation and Tourism of Bangladesh decided to proceed after several rounds of discussions and diplomatic efforts by the foreign ministries of both countries. North Korea will look after Bangladesh affairs from its New Delhi mission: MoFa spokesperson

Iran and Saudi Arabia are among six nations invited Thursday (August 24, 2023) to join the BRICS bloc of developing economies. United Arab Emirates, Argentina, Egypt and Ethiopia are also set to join the bloc from 2024. The announcement was made at the BRICS summit in Johannesburg by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, whose country is the current BRICS chair. Also read: China to support Bangladesh in joining BRICS: XI tells Hasina during talks BRICS is currently made up of the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Those five members agreed at this week's summit to expand the bloc. It's the second time that BRICS has decided to expand. The bloc was formed in 2009 by Brazil, Russia, India and China. South Africa was added in 2010. The BRICS bloc represents around 40% of the world's population and contributes more than a quarter of global GDP. Three of the group's other leaders are attending the summit and were present alongside Ramaphosa for the announcement, including Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Also read: BRICS: China, Russia and other emerging economies turn to main summit agenda in South Africa Russian President Vladimir Putin did not travel to the summit after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for him in March for the abduction of children from Ukraine. He has participated in the summit virtually, while Russia was represented at the announcement in Johannesburg by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is already a veteran at surprising the world in just three years in power. He's done it again this week by announcing that, after a year of waging war, he will lead it from the battlefront. Abiy’s rule has been short in the vast sweep of Ethiopian history, but he has spent almost all his life preparing for it. Told as a child by his mother that she believed he would lead Ethiopia, he now speaks of martyrdom, if needed, to hold the nation together. Abiy rocketed to office out of seemingly nowhere in 2018 with vows of dramatic reforms to a long-repressive national government. He also announced he would make peace with neighboring Eritrea after years of bitter conflict. For that, the youthful prime minister was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Then, less than a year later, Abiy announced his military was at war with the leaders of Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, who had dominated the previous national government but quickly found friction with the prime minister. Political differences turned to gunfire in November 2020. Read: People fleeing Ethiopia allege attacks, forced conscription Tens of thousands of people have been killed since then, and close to half a million people inside Tigray now face the world’s worst famine crisis in a decade, one that the United States has called “entirely man-made.” The 45-year-old Abiy has now plunged into the fight, arriving at the battlefront on Tuesday, a government spokesman said. The prime minister is no stranger to war. As a teenager, he joined fighters who eventually overthrew the country’s Marxist Derg regime, then signed up for the new government's military. He took part in Ethiopia’s war against Eritrea as a radio operator, serving at the border in Tigray, and later became a lieutenant colonel. Now roles are dramatically reversed. The Tigray fighters Abiy once called friends are now the enemy, and the Eritrean soldiers he once fought have been allowed to join the war as Ethiopia's allies. Years after his career turned from the military to politics, Abiy faces a battlefield challenge he has never faced before: Commanding an army. But the prime minister is known as a man with a sense of destiny. He “clearly has a personal sense of his right to be ruler of Ethiopia and take on the responsibility it entails,” said Christopher Clapham, a retired professor associated with the University of Cambridge. Overseeing the fracture of Ethiopia, a nation with a 3,000-year history, would be a “massive blow” to Abiy, Clapham said, and by heading to the battlefront he is following the tradition of emperors. Read:Urgent efforts to calm Ethiopia as war reaches one-year mark But emperors can fall, and governments, too. The rival Tigray forces, whose advance on Ethiopia’s capital in recent weeks prompted a national state of emergency, want to see Abiy gone, by force if needed. The deeply religious prime minister came to office preaching national unity, and representing it as well. The son of a Christian and Muslim and of mixed ethnic heritage, he shocked Africa's second-most populous country by apologizing for the past government's abuses. Tigrayans have recalled cheering him on, at first. “War is the epitome of hell for all involved,” Abiy said in his Nobel address in those earlier days. Now the hardened positions by the warring sides, each believing they can be victorious, have tested the efforts of mediators from the United States and African Union. Abiy believes the Tigray forces will be pushed back into their region, U.S. envoy Jeffrey Feltman said this week. But he added, “I question that confidence.” The war front, Feltman said, is edging closer to Ethiopia’s capital, with the Tigray fighters newly on the move toward Debre Sina, less than a day’s drive from Addis Ababa. The fighters are also trying to cut off a crucial supply line from neighboring Djibouti, a further threat to Africa’s diplomatic capital. Accordingly, a growing number of countries have told their citizens to leave immediately. And the U.S. has told Americans again and again that no Afghanistan-style evacuation is coming for them. The war, Abiy said in announcing his move to the battlefront, “is a struggle that determines whether we exist or not. But we will definitely win. It is unthinkable for Ethiopia to be defeated. We are in a time when it requires to lead the country by paying the sacrifice.” He called on fellow Ethiopians to meet him there.

A new round of deadly attacks and forced conscription has begun against ethnic Tigrayans in an area of Ethiopia now controlled by Amhara regional authorities in collaboration with soldiers from neighboring Eritrea, people fleeing over the border to Sudan tell The Associated Press as the yearlong war intensifies. Urgent diplomatic meetings with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and Tigray leader Debretsion Gebremichael in an attempt to calm the fighting have found a small “window of opportunity" as the rival sides agreed a political solution through dialogue was required, African Union envoy Olesegun Obasanjo said in briefings Monday. The State Department said U.S. envoy Jeffrey Feltman saw a window to act with Obasanjo and was meeting with him in Ethiopia's capital Monday night. Tigray forces have been approaching Addis Ababa to press the prime minister to step aside, leading Ethiopia’s government to declare a state of emergency last week while the U.S. and other countries urged citizens to leave immediately. The war has killed thousands after political tensions with the Tigray forces who once dominated the national government turned deadly. Those fleeing the western Tigray communities of Adebay and Humera in the past week described warnings from Amhara authorities against supporting the Tigray forces. The accounts confirm warnings by the U.S. and others that Eritrean soldiers remain in the Tigray region, and they indicate that pressure is growing on Tigrayans of mixed heritage who have tried to live quietly amid what the U.S. has alleged as ethnic cleansing in western Tigray. Read: Urgent efforts to calm Ethiopia as war reaches one-year mark As reports grew about the Tigray forces’ momentum, Amhara authorities at a public meeting in Adebay on Oct. 29 warned residents against supporting them, two men who fled to Sudan said. “There are people working for (the Tigray forces). You should give them to us or we will kill you all together,” one who fled, 28-year-old Mawcha Asmelash, recalled authorities saying. Five days later, he said, Amhara militia attacked. “I saw four people being killed on the run,” he said. He and other men hid in the bush for two days, gathering information from local women and trying to judge whether it was safe to return. But the women estimated scores of men had been killed and residents had been forbidden to bury their bodies. The women urged them to flee. Another man who fled Adebay, 36-year-old Berhane Gebremikael, confirmed the public meeting. He said he saw one man killed as he ran from Amhara militia and the Eritrean soldiers, who he said have a camp in the community. “They called it revenge,” he said. He described a perilous situation for Tigrayan residents of Adebay who had remained during the war, with many changing their identity, paying bribes or using mixed heritage for a measure of protection. Berhane, whose mother is Eritrean, now fears he can’t return. “Maybe the worst things will happen in the next days,” he said. “The international community should intervene.” A man who fled to Sudan from the city of Humera, near the Eritrean border, told the AP he had stayed there because of his part-Tigrayan heritage, but last week Amhara authorities “started collecting people. Young men and boys are being forced to join the fighting.” Again, it started with a public warning, 28-year-old Alemu Abraha said. Then Amhara authorities, along with Eritrean soldiers, started visiting homes at night to take people away. His friends were taken, he said, and he believes the men are being sent to the Amhara region, where most fighting has occurred in recent months. Amhara regional spokesman Gizachew Muluneh did not respond to AP questions. Amhara regional officials have asserted that western Tigray is historically their land, and during the war witnesses and humanitarian workers have described scores of thousands of Tigrayans forced from communities there. Read: UN report says Ethiopia’s war marked by ‘extreme brutality’ Meanwhile, reports of mass detentions of Tigrayans continue under the state of emergency. An Ethiopian Orthodox Church official in Addis Ababa, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, said dozens of priests, monks, deacons and others had been detained in the capital because of their ethnicity. Ethiopian authorities have said they are detaining people suspected of supporting the Tigray forces. The government-created Ethiopian Human Rights Commission in a statement noted with concern that “arrests appeared to be based on ethnicity” and included the elderly and mothers with children. As the war closes in, Ethiopia’s government insists that life in the capital remains normal. On Sunday, scores of thousands of people rallied in Addis Ababa in a show of support, some carrying signs criticizing the international community, including foreign media. On Monday, AU envoy Obasanjo, a former Nigerian president, told the AU Peace and Security Council he saw a window of opportunity after meeting separately with Ethiopia's prime minister and the Tigray leader over the weekend. The rival sides agree “the differences opposing them are political and require political solution through dialogue," he said. The envoy added, however, that “the window of opportunity we have is very little and that time is paramount for any intervention” in the critical situation facing not only Ethiopia but the Horn of Africa at large. He repeated calls for dialogue without preconditions, an immediate cease-fire and immediate and unrestricted humanitarian access. State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters that envoy Feltman met with the prime minister Friday and then went to neighboring Kenya to meet its president before returning to Ethiopia on Monday to “urgently press the parties to de-escalate the conflict and negotiate.” There was no indication that Feltman, like Obasanjo, went to the Tigray region. Price simply said that “we have engaged with the (Tigray forces) as well.” The prime minister's spokeswoman has called the meeting with Feltman “constructive," with no details.

Urgent new efforts to calm Ethiopia’s escalating war are unfolding Thursday as a U.S. special envoy visits and the president of neighboring Kenya calls for an immediate cease-fire while the country marks a year of conflict. The lack of dialogue “has been particularly disturbing,” Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta said in a statement, as the war that has killed thousands of people and displaced millions since November 2020 threatens to engulf the capital, Addis Ababa. Rival Tigray forces seized key cities in recent days and linked up with another armed group, leading the government of Africa’s second most populous country to declare a national state of emergency. Also Read: Bangladeshi investors should eye untapped African continent: Experts The spokesperson for Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, Billene Seyoum, did not immediately respond Thursday when asked whether he would meet with U.S. special envoy Jeffrey Feltman, who this week insisted that “there are many, many ways to initiate discreet talks.” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday said he had spoken with Abiy “to offer my good offices to create the conditions for a dialogue so the fighting stops.” East African regional leaders also called for a cease-fire, and the European Union warned of “fragmentation and widespread armed conflict.” But so far, efforts for discussions have failed. Last week a congressional aide told The Associated Press that “there have been talks of talks with officials, but when it gets to the Abiy level and the senior (Tigray forces) level, the demands are wide, and Abiy doesn’t want to talk.” Also Read: UN report says Ethiopia’s war marked by ‘extreme brutality’ Instead, the prime minister has again called citizens to rise up and “bury” the Tigray forces who long dominated the national government before he came to power. On Wednesday, Facebook said it had removed a post by Abiy with that language, saying it violated policies against inciting violence. It was a rare action against a head of state or government. Kenya’s foreign ministry separately said that statements inciting ordinary citizens into the conflict “must be shunned.” Kenya also has increased security along its borders amid fears of a wave of Ethiopians fleeing the war as one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises spreads. Tigray forces spokesman Getachew Reda in a tweet late Wednesday claimed they had “joined hands” with another armed group, the Oromo Liberation Army, to seize the city of Kemisse even closer to the capital. “Joint operations will continue in the days and weeks ahead,” he said. A security source confirmed that the two armed groups had linked up to control Kemisse and said Tigray forces were pushing east as well as south toward the capital. The source spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to journalists. Also Read: Misappropriation of Tk12 crore: 2 Bank Asia officials among 5 sued All sides in the war have committed abuses, a joint U.N. human rights investigation announced Wednesday, while millions of people in the government-blockaded Tigray region are no longer able to receive humanitarian aid. The U.N. has said no aid has entered Tigray since Ethiopian military airstrikes resumed there on Oct. 18. Meanwhile, it says insecurity as the Tigray forces push south through the neighboring Amhara region has hampered aid delivery to hundreds of thousands of hungry people. With the new state of emergency’s sweeping powers of detention, ethnic Tigrayans in the capital told the AP they were hiding in their homes in fear as authorities carried out house-to-house searches and stopped people on the streets to check identity cards, which everyone must now carry. One lawyer, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, estimated that thousands of people had been detained this week, citing conversations with “many people from the four corners of the city.” He said Tigrayan lawyers like him were now powerless to help because of their ethnicity. “Our only hope now is the (Tigray forces),” said one young woman, Rahel, whose husband was detained on Tuesday while going to work as a merchant but has not been charged. “They might not save us, to be honest. I’ve already given up on my life, but if our families can be saved, I think that’s enough.” Another Tigrayan in the capital, Yared, said his brother, a businessman, was detained on Monday, and when he went to the police station to visit him he saw dozens of other Tigrayans. “It’s crazy, my friends in Addis, non-Tigrayans, are calling me and telling me not to leave the house,” Yared said, adding that police came to his house on Wednesday, the latest of several such visits since the war began. Also Read: Bangladesh’s importance in S Asia growing: US “They go through your phone and if you have some material about the Tigray war that would be suggesting supporting the war, they would just detain you,” he said. “The past four days have been the worst by far, the scope at which they’re detaining people, it’s just terrorizing. We don’t feel safe in our homes anymore.”  

The U.N. human rights chief said Wednesday that Ethiopia’s yearlong war has been marked by “extreme brutality” as a joint investigation into alleged atrocities faulted all sides for committing abuses, and “the big numbers of violations” are linked to Ethiopian forces and those from neighboring Eritrea. The investigation was hampered by authorities’ intimidation and restrictions and didn’t visit some of the war’s worst-affected locations. The report, a rare collaboration by the U.N. human rights office with the government-created Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, was released a day before the war’s one-year mark and as Africa’s second most populous country enters a new state of emergency with rival Tigray forces threatening the capital. Also Read: In Afghanistan, a girls’ school is the story of a village The U.N. told The Associated Press that the collaboration was necessary for its team to gain access to a troubled region that Ethiopian authorities have largely prevented journalists, rights groups and other outside observers from entering. The conflict that erupted in Ethiopia’s Tigray region has killed thousands of people since the government of Nobel Peace Prize-winning Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed allowed soldiers from Eritrea to invade Tigray and join Ethiopian forces in fighting the Tigray forces who long dominated the national government before Abiy took office. Ethnic Tigrayans across the country have since reported being targeted with arbitrary detentions, while civilians in Tigray have described gang rapes, famine and mass expulsions. “In western Tigray, it was apparent that the Tigrayans had left most of the areas, as it was difficult to find Tigrayans to interview,” the new report says. The joint investigation covers events until late June when the Tigray forces regained much of their region, but it failed to visit some of the deadliest sites of the war, including the city of Axum, because of security and other obstacles. Notably, the report says, those obstacles included the Ethiopian government’s failure to release satellite phones procured for the investigation. Also Read: South Sudan names road after Bangladesh The investigation says all sides, including forces from the neighboring Amhara region that have claimed western Tigray, have committed abuses, which may amount to crimes against humanity and war crimes. It breaks little new ground and confirms in general the abuses described by witnesses throughout the war. But it gives little sense of scale, saying only that the more than 1,300 rapes reported to authorities are likely far fewer than the real number. Despite the report’s shortcomings, the prime minister’s office said in a statement that it “clearly established the claim of genocide as false and utterly lacking of any factual basis.” The statement noted “serious reservations” about the report but claimed it laid “sinister allegations to rest.” And it acknowledged the need to “redouble our efforts” to hold perpetrators accountable. A high-level task force will be formed, it said. Among the investigation’s findings: Several Ethiopian military camps were used to torture captured Tigray forces or civilians suspected of supporting them. Others were detained in “secret locations” and military camps across the country, with arbitrary detentions in many cases. Tigray forces detained some ethnic Amhara civilians in western Tigray in the early days of the war on suspicion of supporting the military, and in some cases tortured them. “The Tigray conflict has been marked by extreme brutality. The gravity and seriousness of the violations and abuses we have documented underscore the need to hold perpetrators accountable on all sides,” said Michelle Bachelet, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights. Reports of abuses such as summary executions in Tigray continue, she said. And yet the report gives little sign that Eritrean soldiers were responsible for many of the atrocities, as witnesses have alleged from the earliest days of the war. Until March, Ethiopia’s prime minister denied they were even in the country. Bachelet told reporters that while the report doesn’t explicitly mention that Ethiopian and Eritrean forces were responsible for the majority of the violations, “I would say that the big numbers of violations of human rights are linked to the Ethiopian and Eritrean defense forces.” She also noted “disturbing suggestions of ethnically motivated violence” that warrant further investigation. She denied the probe came under government pressure. Ethiopia’s government imposed a blockade on Tigray since the Tigray forces regained control in June, cutting off almost all access for commercial goods and humanitarian aid. That followed large-scale looting and destruction of food and crops across the region that “has had a severe socioeconomic impact on the civilian population,” the report says. In addition, some camps for displaced people who fled the war didn’t receive food rations for months. Also Read: US gives final clearance to COVID-19 shots for kids 5 to 11 The joint investigation, however, “could not confirm deliberate or willful denial of humanitarian assistance to the civilian population in Tigray or the use of starvation as a weapon of war.” It did call for further investigation. The new report, based on more than 260 interviews with victims and witnesses, said it had received no response from Eritrea’s government or from Amhara regional officials, and the Tigray forces expressed its opposition to the involvement of the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission. The report acknowledged that the presence of EHRC staffers at times inhibited interviews. The investigation says the Ethiopian government should “consider” setting up a court to ensure accountability and the international community should “support” the government in restoring stability. It also expresses concern that “investigations conducted by Ethiopian national institutions do not match the scope and breadth of the violations it has identified.” “We don’t have enough transparency,” Bachelet said.      

As food and the means to buy it dwindled in a city under siege, the young mother felt she could do no more. She killed herself, unable to feed her children. In a Catholic church across town, flour and oil to make communion wafers will soon run out. And the flagship hospital in Mekele, the capital of Ethiopia’s Tigray region, wrestles with whether to give patients the expired medications that remain. Its soap and bleach are gone. A year of war and months of government-enforced deprivation have left the city of a half-million people with rapidly shrinking stocks of food, fuel, medicine and cash. In rural areas, life is even grimmer as thousands of people survive on wild cactus fruit or sell the meager aid they receive. Man-made famine, the world’s worst hunger crisis in a decade, has begun. Despite the severing of almost all communication with the outside world, The Associated Press drew on a dozen interviews with people inside Mekele, along with internal aid documents, for the most detailed picture yet of life under the Ethiopian government’s blockade of the Tigray region’s 6 million people. Amid sputtering electricity supplies, Mekele is often lit by candles that many people can’t afford. Shops and streets are emptying, and cooking oil and baby formula are running out. People from rural areas and civil servants who have gone unpaid for months have swelled the ranks of beggars. People are thinner. Funeral announcements on the radio have increased. “The coming weeks will make or break the situation here,” said Mengstu Hailu, vice president for research at Mekele University, where the mother who killed herself worked. He told the AP about his colleague’s suicide last month as well as the deaths of two acquaintances from hunger and a death from lack of medication. “Are people going to die in the hundreds and thousands?” he asked. Read: 'I just cry': Dying of hunger in Ethiopia's blockaded Tigray Pleas from the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and African nations for the warring sides to stop the fighting have failed, even as the U.S. threatens new sanctions targeting individuals in Africa’s second-most populous nation. Instead, a new offensive by Ethiopian and allied forces has begun in an attempt to crush the Tigray fighters who dominated the national government for nearly three decades before being sidelined by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize winner. Ethiopia is one of the top recipients of U.S. humanitarian aid. The government in Addis Ababa, fearing the assistance will end up supporting Tigray forces, imposed the blockade in June after the fighters retook much of Tigray, then brought the war into the neighboring Amhara and Afar regions. Hundreds of thousands are now displaced there, widening the humanitarian crisis. After the AP last month reported the first starvation deaths under the blockade, and the U.N. humanitarian chief called Ethiopia a “stain on our conscience,” the government expelled seven U.N. officials, accusing them of falsely inflating the scale of the crisis. The expulsions were “unprecedented and disturbing,” the U.S. said. Just 14% of needed aid has entered Tigray since the blockade began, according to the U.N., and almost no medicine at all. “There is no other way to define what is happening to the people of Tigray than by ethnic cleansing,” InterAction, an alliance of international aid groups, said this month of the conflict marked by mass detentions, expulsions and gang-rapes. “The Tigrayan population of 6 million face mass starvation now,” former U.N. humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock wrote in a separate statement. In response to questions, the spokesperson for the Ethiopian prime minister’s office, Billene Seyoum, again blamed Tigray forces for aid disruptions and asserted “the government has worked relentlessly to ensure humanitarian aid reaches those in need.” She did not say when basic services would be allowed to Tigray. At Tigray’s flagship Ayder referral hospital, Dr. Sintayehu Misgina, a surgeon and the vice chief medical director, watches in horror. Patients sometimes go without food, and haven’t had meat, eggs or milk since June. Fuel to run ambulances has run out. A diesel generator powers equipment for emergency surgeries only when fuel is available. Read: Ethiopia calls “all capable” citizens to fight in Tigray war “God have mercy for those who come when it’s off,” he said. No help is in sight. A World Health Organization staffer told Sintayehu there was nothing left to give, even though a warehouse in neighboring Afar was full of life-saving aid. Scores of badly malnourished and ill children have come to the hospital in recent weeks. Not all have survived. “There are no drugs,” said Mizan Wolde, the mother of a 5-year-old patient. Mehari Tesfa despaired for his 4-year-old daughter, who has a brain abscess and is wasting away. “It’s been three months since she came here,” he said. “She was doing OK, then the medication ceased. She is now taking only oxygen, nothing else.” Across Tigray, the number of children hospitalized for severe acute malnutrition has surged, according to the U.N. children’s agency — 18,600 from February to August, compared to 8,900 in 2020. The U.N. says hospitals outside of Mekele have run out of nutrition supplies to treat them. “According to colleagues in the medical and agricultural sector, hundreds (of people) are dying each day, that’s the estimation,” Mekele University lecturer Nahusenay Belay said. He said one acquaintance died from lack of diabetes medication, and a young relative in the city’s outskirts starved to death. “I’m surviving by the help of family and friends like anyone else,” he said. Prices for essential goods are spiking. The U.N. last week said cooking oil in Mekele had shot up more than 400% since June and diesel more than 600%. In the town of Shire, swamped by scores of thousands of displaced people, diesel was up 1,200%, flour 300% and salt more than 500%. The true toll of the deprivation in rural areas of the largely agricultural region is unknown as the lack of fuel prevents most travel. One internal aid document dated last month and seen by the AP described thousands of desperate people who had fled “trapped and starved communities” near the border with Eritrea, whose soldiers have been blamed for some of the worst atrocities of the war.  Raed: At river where Tigrayan bodies floated, fears of ‘many more’ “Most are able to eat at least one meal per day, largely thanks to the availability of cactus fruit,” the document said. “The situation is likely to deteriorate after September when wild fruits are exhausted.” A document from another part of Tigray described “too many people to count” trying to sell items such as buckets and soap distributed by humanitarian groups. Some people walked straight from the distribution site to the roadside to sell. “They have no option as they needed the money to buy food to supplement the inadequate food rations,” the document stated, adding the forecast for famine is “terrifying.” A Catholic priest in Mekele, the Rev. Taum Berhane, described conditions echoing harsh tales from biblical times. Even before the war, parts of Tigray faced an invasion of desert locusts. Then hostile forces looted and burned crops and shot farmers’ animals. Now, the blockade means people are going hungry despite having money in the bank. “You see lactating mothers with no milk,” he said. “We see babies dying. I saw myself people eating leaves like goats.” While the church struggles to support camps for thousands of displaced people, “they are telling us, ‘Let us go back to our villages, even if there’s nothing there. It’s better to die at home.’” The Catholic bishop in the town of Adigrat told him eight children have died at the hospital there, he said. The priest, 70 years old and a diabetic, now watches his medication dwindle. His congregation’s spirits, too. With cash in Tigray running out, the collection plate is no longer passed at Mass. The bread for communion will be depleted soon. “Even if I survive, am I going to preach to a vacuum if all humans perish?” he asked. “The only hope is, to be frank, these people have to stop fighting and talk for sustainable peace.”

In parts of Ethiopia’s Tigray region, people now eat only green leaves for days. At a health center last week, a mother and her newborn weighing just 1.7 pounds died from hunger. In every district of the more than 20 where one aid group works, residents have starved to death. For months, the United Nations has warned of famine. Now internal documents and witness accounts reveal the first starvation deaths since Ethiopia’s government in June imposed what the U.N. calls “a de facto humanitarian aid blockade.” Forced starvation is the latest chapter in a conflict where ethnic Tigrayans have been massacred, gang-raped and expelled. Months after crops were burned and communities were stripped bare, a new death has set in. The U.N. calls it the world’s worst hunger crisis in a decade. “You are killing people,” Hayelom Kebede, the former director of Tigray’s flagship Ayder Referral Hospital, recalled telling Ethiopia’s health ministry in a phone call this month. “They said, ‘Yeah, OK, we’ll forward it to the prime minister.’ What can I do? I just cry.” Hayelom shared with The Associated Press photos of a few of the 50 children receiving “very intensive care” because of malnutrition, some of the first images to emerge from Tigray in months. In one, a small child stares straight into the camera, a feeding tube in his nose, a protective amulet lying in the pronounced hollow of his throat. The blockade marks a new phase in the 10-month war between Tigray forces and the Ethiopian government, along with its allies. Now the United States has issued an ultimatum: Take steps to stop the fighting and let aid flow freely, or new sanctions could come within weeks. Read: Ethiopia calls “all capable” citizens to fight in Tigray war The war began as a political dispute between the prime minister, 2019 Nobel Peace Prize winner Abiy Ahmed, and the Tigrayans who had long dominated Ethiopia’s repressive national government. In June, the Tigray forces fighters retook the region of 6 million people, and Ethiopia’s government declared a ceasefire, citing humanitarian grounds. Instead, it has sealed off the region tighter than ever. More than 350,000 metric tons of food aid are positioned in Ethiopia, but almost none of it can get into Tigray. The government is so wary of supplies reaching the Tigray forces that humanitarian workers boarding rare flights to the region have been given an unusual list of items they cannot bring: Dental flossers. Can openers. Multivitamins. Medicines, even personal ones. The list, obtained by the AP, also banned means of documenting the crisis such as hard drives and flash drives. Tigray has returned to darkness, with no telecommunications, no internet, no banking services and very little aid. Ethiopia’s prime minister and other senior officials have denied there is hunger in Tigray. The government blames the Tigray forces and insecurity for troubles with aid delivery and says it has reduced the number of checkpoints that slowed convoys. It also has accused humanitarian groups of supporting the Tigray fighters. The prime minister’s spokeswoman, Billene Seyoum, did not say when the government would allow basic services to the region. The government "has opened access to aid routes by cutting the number of checkpoints from seven to two and creating air bridges for humanitarian flights," she said in a statement. However, medical supplies on the first European Union air bridge flight were removed during government inspection. In the most extensive account yet of the blockade's toll, a humanitarian worker told the AP that deaths from starvation are reported in “every single” district of the more than 20 in Tigray where one aid group operates. The group had run out of food aid and fuel. The worker, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. “Currently, there are devastating reports coming from every corner,” the aid group wrote to a donor in August, according to documents shared with the AP. In April, the group wrote that 22 people in one sub-district had starved to death. In August, another staffer visited a community in central Tigray and wrote that some people "are eating only green leaves for days.” One aid worker who recently visited Tigray described the effects of the deprivation: Some toilets in crowded camps for the displaced are overflowing without the cash to pay for their cleaning, leaving thousands of people vulnerable to outbreaks of disease. People who ate three meals a day now eat only one. Camp residents rely on the charity of host communities who often struggle to feed themselves. “It’s worse than subsistence," the aid worker said. At least 150 people starved to death in August, including in camps for displaced people, the Tigray External Affairs Office has alleged. The International Organization for Migration, the U.N. agency which supports the camps, said: “We unfortunately are not able to speak on this topic.” Food security experts months ago estimated that 400,000 people in Tigray face famine conditions, more than the rest of the world combined. But the blockade means experts cannot collect needed data to make a formal declaration of famine. Read: At river where Tigrayan bodies floated, fears of ‘many more’ Such a declaration would be deeply embarrassing for Ethiopia, which in the 1980s seized the world’s attention with a famine so severe, also driven by conflict and government neglect, that some 1 million people died. Now malnutrition rates are near 30% for children under 5, the U.N. World Food Program said Wednesday, and near 80% for pregnant and breastfeeding women. As the war spreads, so might the hunger. Tigray forces have entered the neighboring regions of Amhara and Afar in recent weeks, and some residents accuse them of carrying out acts of retaliation, including closing off supply routes. The Tigray forces deny it, saying they aim to pressure Ethiopia’s government to lift the blockade. There is little help coming. The U.N. says at least 100 trucks of aid must reach Tigray every day. But as of Sept. 8, less than 500 had arrived since July. No medical supplies or fuel have been delivered to Tigray in more than a month, the U.S. says, blaming “government harassment,” not the fighting. On Tuesday, the U.N. issued the first report of its kind showing the number of days remaining before cash or fuel ran out for critical work like treating Tigray’s most severely malnourished. Often, that number was zero.

Ethiopia’s government on Tuesday summoned all capable citizens to war, urging them to join the country’s military to stop resurgent forces from the embattled Tigray region “once and for all.” The call to arms is an ominous sign that all of Ethiopia’s 110 million people are being drawn into a conflict that Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, once declared would be over within weeks. The deadly fighting has now spread beyond Tigray into neighboring regions, and fracturing in Africa’s second most populous country could destabilize the entire Horn of Africa region. Tuesday’s announcement effectively ends the unilateral cease-fire the government declared in June as its military retreated from Tigray. It is also almost certain to magnify the toll of a nine-month war that has led to the massacre of thousands, widespread gang rapes and the displacement of entire communities, mostly Tigrayan. Hundreds of thousands of people in Tigray now face famine conditions in the world’s worst hunger crisis in a decade. Read:At river where Tigrayan bodies floated, fears of ‘many more’ The prime minister’s summons chilled Tigrayans, even those outside Tigray, with the statement calling on all Ethiopians to be “the eyes and ears of the country in order to track down and expose spies and agents” of the Tigray forces. Witnesses and lawyers have said thousands of Tigrayans already have been detained during the conflict for their identity alone. “The kind of war he’s calling for is on another level, it’s for a total annihilation of Tigray,” said Teklehaymanot G. Weldemichel, whose family remains trapped in the Tigray region. “‘Once and for all’ means to finish everyone out.” The expansion of fighting has alarmed some people of other ethnicities, such as the Amhara, who fear that the Tigray forces, now on the offensive, will take revenge. “We know the (Tigray People’s Liberation Front) is well-armed and the losers would again be the Amhara people,” Demissie Alemayehu, a U.S.-based professor who was born in the Amhara region, said shortly after the prime minister’s call to war. Without addressing Ethiopia’s root problems, including a constitution based on ethnic differences, he said, it will be “very difficult to talk about peace.” The deputy head of the Amhara regional government, Fenta Mandefro, asserted that hundreds of Amhara residents have already been killed. “More people will be endangered if we continue adhering to a cease-fire ignored by the TPLF,” he said. The call to join the military is so far not compulsory, but with access to parts of Ethiopia increasingly blocked, it’s difficult to know what kind of pressure is being applied. Spokespeople for Abiy’s office, the military and the Tigray emergency task force did not respond to questions. Ethiopia’s sharply worded statement came after weeks of mobilization by the federal government, including military recruiting and blood donation drives, as Tigray forces pushed into the neighboring Amhara and Afar regions. On Tuesday, the spokesman for the Tigray forces, Getachew Reda, told The Associated Press that the prime minister “wants to send militia to the war front as cannon fodder” and called it unfortunate that “ill-trained, ill-equipped people” are now being pressed into the fight. The war began as a political dispute. Tigray leaders dominated Ethiopia’s repressive government for nearly three decades, embittering many across the country by helping to put in place a system of ethnic federalism that led to ethnic tensions. When Abiy came to office in 2018, the Tigray leaders were sidelined. Fighting began in November and took a stunning turn in June when the Tigray forces, strengthened by new recruits among Tigrayans horrified by the war’s atrocities, retook much of the region. The Tigray forces now say they want to secure their long-blockaded region of 6 million people, end the fighting and see the prime minister leave office. Despite the resentment of many in Ethiopia, they are hoping for public support as they vow to press to the capital, Addis Ababa, if needed. Read:Tunisia on edge as president suspends parliament, fires PM “If his government topples, that’s icing on the cake,” spokesman for the Tigray forces told the AP last week. Like Ethiopia’s government, they could use deprivation as means of pressure. Getachew confirmed that the Tigray forces’ aim in the Afar region is to control a crucial supply line to the rest of Ethiopia from neighboring Djibouti, on a major shipping lane. He called it “part of the game,” saying people in Tigray are starving. “It’s not to spite the other parts of Ethiopia,” he said. Last week the United Nations and the United States sent high-level officials to press Ethiopia’s government for more access to the Tigray, where telephone, internet and banking services remain cut off. But Ethiopia’s government has been angered by the international pressure over Tigray, especially as the fighting spreads. Some 300,000 people have now been displaced outside Tigray, and this week the U.N. said it was “extremely alarmed” by reports that more than 200 people had been killed in attacks on displaced people in Afar. Ethiopia’s government blamed the Tigray forces, whose spokesman denied it. The new statement from the prime minister’s office takes aim at some in the international community, blaming them for the “machinations of foreign hands” in the war, and alleging without evidence that some had been caught “red-handed supporting the (Tigray forces) under the disguise of humanitarian aid.” The government has suspended the operations of Doctors Without Borders and the Norwegian Refugee Committee, accusing them of “disseminating misinformation.” The rhetoric in the government’s new statement “could well presage renewed restrictions on the humanitarian relief efforts in Tigray, reversing the already modest progress made in recent weeks,” Aly Verjee, a senior adviser at the United States Institute of Peace, told the AP. Read: Jihadis expand control to new Burkina Faso fronts The statement also “leaves little room for dialogue, and as we have seen, a war of words does little to end the war on the ground,” he said. “When the federal government calls Tigrayan forces terrorists and traitors, it is not likely to encourage restraint on the part of the Tigrayans, who are already militarily ascendant.” The prime minister last month referred to the Tigray forces as “weeds” and “cancer,” bringing a swift warning from the U.S. about dehumanizing rhetoric. Since then, Ethiopia’s government has repeatedly said it is targeting the Tigray forces alone and the TPLF, which it declared a terrorist group earlier this year. “The battle is not with Tigray but with the terrorist forces,” its new statement said.

From time to time, a body floating down the river separating Ethiopia’s troubled Tigray region from Sudan was a silent reminder of a war conducted in the shadows. But in recent days, the corpses became a flow. Bloated, drained of color from their journey, the bodies were often mutilated: genitals severed, eyes gouged, a missing limb. The Sudanese fishermen who spotted them, and the refugees from Tigray who helped pull them to shore, found many corpses’ hands bound. Some of them had been shot. The Associated Press reported dozens of bodies floating down the Tekeze River earlier this week and saw six of the graves on Wednesday, marking the first time any reporters could reach the scene. Doctors who saw the bodies said one was tattooed with a common name in the Tigrinya language and others had the facial markings common among Tigrayans, raising fresh alarm about atrocities in the least-known area of the Tigray war. Read:Tunisia on edge as president suspends parliament, fires PM “They are from Tigray,” said Garey Youhanis, a Tigrayan who helped bury several bodies found on Sunday. With a piece of red cord, he demonstrated how their hands were tied behind their backs. He squatted on the rock-strewn shore, crossed himself and prayed. The deaths are the latest massacre in a nine-month war that has killed thousands of civilians and is now spilling into other regions of Ethiopia, Africa’s second most populous country and the anchor of the often-volatile Horn of Africa. Though Tigray forces in June reclaimed much of the region as Ethiopian and allied forces retreated, western Tigray is still controlled by authorities from Ethiopia’s neighboring Amhara region, who have cleared out many ethnic Tigrayans while saying the land is historically theirs. Witnesses have told the AP of watching mass expulsions. More than 60,000 Tigrayans fled to Sudan, where thousands remain in makeshift camps a short walk from the river in the hope of hearing news from those who still arrive. Some scrutinized the bodies in the river for clues, and they have asked Sudanese police and the United Nations to exhume them for autopsies. “In the last one week, 43 bodies were buried around this river,” the surgeon from the nearby Tigray town of Humera, Tewodros Tefera, told the AP. He and other refugees believe the bodies were dumped into the river at Humera, which has seen some of the worst violence since the war began in November. “Some had amputated limbs and legs,” Tewodros said. “There was a man which we buried yesterday, his genital area was completely severed. ... So this is the kind of trauma that we’re seeing of western Tigray.” He told the AP they hadn’t heard of any new bodies since Tuesday, when at least seven were found. But he believes an active search along the river could reveal “many, many more,” perhaps hundreds. Ethiopia’s government has accused the rival Tigray forces of dumping the bodies themselves for propaganda purposes. A “fake massacre,” the spokeswoman for Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, Billene Seyoum, told reporters on Thursday. But the discovery has increased international pressure on the prime minister, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, at a time when his government is already accused by the U.N., the United States and the European Union of besieging Tigray and blocking food and other aid to millions of people. Hundreds of thousands face famine conditions in the world’s worst hunger crisis in a decade. Ethiopia’s prime minister in recent days referred to the Tigray forces as “weeds” and a “cancer,” bringing a warning from the U.N. special envoy on genocide prevention that such dehumanizing language “is of utmost concern.” Ethiopia’s government has said such talk is not meant to describe ordinary Tigrayans. But the bodies in the river brought new fears of ethnic cleansing, or the forcing of a population from a region through expulsions and other violence. Read: Jihadis expand control to new Burkina Faso fronts “We are deeply concerned by the latest developments,” the U.N. refugee agency in Sudan said on Thursday. It confirmed seeing one of the bodies pulled from the river along with “what appear to be several fresh graves.” It said it was unable to confirm the identifies of the dead or how they died. Like other international aid organizations, the U.N. agency said it has no access on the Ethiopian side of the border region. Underlining that absence, the U.N. humanitarian agency on Wednesday tweeted a map showing no foreign aid group active in western Tigray. One that had worked there, the Dutch section of Doctors Without Borders, had its operations suspended by Ethiopia on July 30, accused by the government of spreading “misinformation” and illegally using satellite radio equipment. Ethiopia’s government has alleged that aid groups are arming and supporting the Tigray forces, without evidence. “Those who want corridors for weapons and non-humanitarian goods to be brought into them continue to try to manipulate the realities on the ground in an attempt to convince the world that unfettered access is not happening” in Tigray, the prime minister’s spokeswoman said. She called the Tigray forces, who dominated Ethiopia’s repressive government for years but were sidelined when Abiy took office, a “terrorist organization that has hijacked the well-being of the people of Tigray.” Phone, internet and banking services remain down across the Tigray region of some 6 million people, and the U.N. says more than 5 million need help now. The Tigray forces, who have pushed into the neighboring Afar and Amhara regions and displaced more than 200,000 people, have said restoring basic services is a precondition to negotiations to end the war. Tigray forces on Thursday entered the Amhara town of Lalibela, a UNESCO World Heritage site for its rock-hewn churches, a resident told the AP. While they entered peacefully, “yeah, we’re scared,” he said, worried about damage to what residents call the “new Jerusalem.” He estimated thousands of fighters were there and “many people are running away.” He spoke on condition of anonymity for his safety. With the Tigray forces pushing south after threatening to go as far as the capital if needed, the U.N. humanitarian chief and the USAID administrator in visits to Ethiopia this week urged a cease-fire and talks. Sudan has offered to play a role in mediation. Sudan also could be a direct aid corridor to Tigray. But the prime minister’s spokeswoman called Ethiopia’s relationship with Sudan “a bit tricky,” pointing to a border dispute. “That element needs to be thoroughly addressed before Sudan can be entertained as a credible party in negotiations,” she said. For the refugees in Sudan, each body found in the river is a reminder of loved ones trapped in the fighting. Read:25,000 troops deployed to quell South Africa riots, 117 dead Horrified, refugees in the Sudanese border community of Hamdayet spotted one body that looked familiar. Like most of the Tigrayans killed in the war, it was a young man. “How can I not feel the death of my brother and friend?” said one of the Tigrayans who buried him, Awet, who gave only his first name. “I’m very sorry.” The dead man’s name was Robel, the surgeon Tewodros said. By the water’s edge, his fingers tapping his graying temple in anxiety, he checked his phone for news of other bodies found.