NEARLY 400 people have died of starvation in Ethiopia’s Tigray and Amhara regions in recent months, the national ombudsman said on Tuesday.

It’s a rare admission of hunger-related deaths by Ethiopia’s federal government which usually insists that these reports are “completely wrong.”

Ethiopia’s ombudsman sent experts to the regions, which are gripped by drought and still reeling from a devastating civil war that officially ended 14 months ago. 

The experts reported that 351 people have died of hunger in Tigray in the past six months, with 44 more deaths in Amhara.

Just 14 per cent of the 3.2 million people targeted for food aid by humanitarian agencies in Tigray this month had received it by January 21, according to a memo from the Tigray Food Cluster, a group of aid agencies co-chaired by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and Ethiopian officials.

The memo urges humanitarian groups to “immediately scale up” their operations, warning that “failure to take swift action now will result in severe food insecurity and malnutrition during the lean season, with possible loss of the most vulnerable children and women in the region.”

The UN and the United States paused food aid to Tigray in mid-March last year after alleging there was a “large-scale” scheme to steal humanitarian grain. 

They both lifted the pause in December after introducing reforms to curb any possible theft, but the pause pushed up hunger levels even further and Tigray authorities say food is not reaching those who need it.

About 20.1 million people across Ethiopia need humanitarian food aid due to drought, conflict and a tanking economy. 

A former head of the WFP has described levels of hunger as “marching towards starvation.”

In neighbouring Amhara, a rebellion that erupted in August is impeding relief and making distributions difficult, while several regions of Ethiopia have been devastated by a multi-year drought.

Malnutrition rates among children in parts of Ethiopia’s Afar, Amhara and Oromia regions range between 15.9 per cent and 47 per cent, according to the Ethiopia Nutrition Cluster. 

Tigray, home to 5.5 million people, was the centre of a devastating two-year civil war that killed hundreds of thousands and spilt into the neighbouring regions.

A UN panel accused Ethiopia’s government of using “starvation as a method of warfare” by restricting food aid to Tigray during the conflict, which ended in November 2022 with a peace deal.