No proof of Eritrean troops’ Tigray exit, crisis worsening: UN

Top humanitarian official warns conflict ‘not over’, says ‘vast majority’ of region is fully or partially inaccessible.

The United Nations and its aid partners have seen no proof of a declared withdrawal of Eritrean troops from Ethiopia’s Tigray region, according to the world body’s top humanitarian official, who also warned the situation in the embattled region has deteriorated. The comments by Mark Lowcock during a closed-door UN Security Council meeting on Thursday came more than two weeks after Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said Eritrea had agreed to withdraw the allied forces it had sent into the northern Ethiopian region during the conflict that broke out there in November 2020. “Unfortunately, I must say that neither the UN nor any of the humanitarian agencies we work with have seen proof of Eritrean withdrawal,” the under-secretary general of humanitarian affairs told the council, according to a text of his speech seen by Al Jazeera.