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Bloomberg
The warring sides in Ethiopia agreed to a conditional truce in the northern Tigray region, where a civil war that’s raged since November 2020 has displaced millions of people and brought hundreds of thousands of others to the brink of starvation.
The dissident Tigray People’s Liberation Front said it will implement a “cessation of hostilities effective immediately†once it sees evidence that sufficient humanitarian aid is being delivered to the region. The TPLF’s statement after the government declared a humanitarian truce and said it’s making the “maximum effort†to facilitate the free flow of emergency assistance.
The tentative agreement is closest the two sides have come to a ceasefire since war began. It may serve as a step towards the resumption of humanitarian assistance to people in Tigray and other regions affected by the conflict, as well as a step towards a political process to resolve the dispute between Tigray and federal government.
The truce came days after US Envoy to the Horn of Africa David Satterfield’s visit to Ethiopia, where he called for increased humanitarian access.
The United Nations and non-governmental organisations say no aid has been received in Tigray since mid-December.