UN Warns on Tigray: Five Schools Struck and a Food Convoy Hit
The United Nations human rights chief Volker Türk said airstrikes hit five schools in Tigray on 22 September, and a mortar strike two days later killed civilians in Kobo, in Amhara. A drone strike last Sunday hit a truck carrying food for displaced people, and armed groups have seized humanitarian vehicles in parts of Amhara. The region’s telephone and internet networks remain down, confirmed by the monitoring service NetBlocks, with the outage covering all of Tigray except the west.
The last war in Tigray killed an estimated 600,000 people, and the blackout and blockade that accompanied it produced famine-like conditions for hundreds of thousands — which is why a communications cut, a struck food convoy and seized aid vehicles in the same week read as a pattern rather than a set of incidents. The UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said the organisation is “particularly troubled by reports of the use of drones as well as incidents of harm to civilians”, urging “maximum restraint”. The Secretary-General’s envoy for the Horn of Africa is working with the African Union and the regional bloc to revive the 2022 accord. One jarring piece of timing: Washington lifted its atrocity-related sanctions on Ethiopia and Eritrea only this month. Watch whether aid access survives the week.