Over 30,000 children risk death in famine-hit Tigray: UN

People stand in line to receive food donations, at the Tsehaye primary school, which was turned into a temporary shelter for people displaced by conflict, in the town of Shire, Tigray region, Ethiopia

Tens of thousands of malnourished children risk dying in hard-to-reach areas of Ethiopia's conflict-wracked Tigray region, now hit by famine, the United Nations said Friday. ‘Without humanitarian access to scale up our response, an estimated 30,000-plus severely malnourished children in those highly inaccessible areas are at high risk of death,’ UNICEF spokesman James Elder told reporters in Geneva. His comments came after the UN on Thursday said some 350,000 people in Tigray were facing famine, while two million more people were just a step away from those extreme conditions. ‘There is famine now in Tigray,’ UN humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock said, warning that ‘every expert you speak to will tell you this is going to get a lot worse’.