Ethiopia isn’t blocking aid to eastern Ethiopia – UN
July 24, 2007 (NAIROBI) — Military operations in eastern Ethiopia are hampering the delivery of humanitarian aid, but the government isn’t blockading shipments to the volatile region, the U.N. World Food Program said Tuesday.
The Ogaden rebels, ethnic Somalis who have been fighting the government for more than a decade, said this week that aid was being choked off to their region near the Somali border.
The situation has “reached alarming levels warranting international intervention,” the Ogaden National Liberation Front said.
“WFP does not consider the government is blockading the Somali region,” WFP spokesman Peter Smerdon said Tuesday. He said distributions of WFP food are under way in three of the region’s nine zones.
Still, he said, military operations in the area have restricted commercial trade and the movement of aid, which could lead to a humanitarian crisis.
ONLF’s spokesman Abdirahman Mahdi said the agency talks only about “areas where there is no violence.”
“WFP is not talking about the realities on the ground in the Ogaden region,” Mahdi told The Associated Press from London. “If no immediate intervention is done soon by the international community, there will be a catastrophe in the area.”
The Ethiopian government announced a crackdown on the rebels in June, two months after the ONLF attacked a Chinese-run oil exploration field, killing 74 people.
Last month, Human Rights Watch accused the Ethiopian army of blocking aid, burning homes and displacing thousands of civilians in the crackdown. The New York-based group cited witnesses.
The ONLF is fighting to overthrow the government for what it says are human rights abuses and to establish greater autonomy in the Ogaden, which covers 200,000 square kilometers (77,220 square miles).
(AP)