HUNGER has killed at least 700 people in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region in recent weeks after the United States and the United Nations halted food aid, local officials and researchers say.

The UN and the US first suspended food aid to Tigray in March after the discovery of a scheme to steal donated wheat intended for needy people. 

They extended the suspension to the rest of Ethiopia in early June, affecting about 20 million people in need.

Tigray’s Disaster Risk Management Commission have recorded 728 hunger-related deaths in three of the region’s seven zones since the food aid was suspended in March. 

Commission leader Gebrehiwot Gebregziaher said: “The situation in Tigray is very difficult. Many people are dying because of the food shortage.”

The figure includes 350 hunger deaths in the north-west area, which hosts thousands of people displaced by the two-year conflict in the region that ended in November. 

In mid-March, US aid officials said they had found enough food aid for 134,000 people for sale in a local market in Shire, the area’s biggest town.

Separately, researchers at Mekele University in the regional capital have documented 165 hunger deaths in seven camps for internally displaced people in Tigray since the halting of food aid.