Many people are dying of hunger and starvation in the Wag Hemra zone of north Wollo in the Amhara regional state, residents who fled to Bahir Dar and Ebnat, as well as local officials, told the BBC Amharic.

Tesfaye Gebre, deputy administrator of the Wag Hemra Zone, told the BBC Amharic  that the population in the area had not received any food assistance for the past four months, despite appeals for food aid by authorities.

Since Sekota, the capital of Wag and other large towns in the area are under the occupation of the rebellious Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the local community, which is largely dependent on food aid, has not received any assistance since early July, the deputy administrator said.

Since a conflict broke out one year ago in the Tigray region and expanded throughout northern Ethiopia, most of the areas have been blocked from humanitarian assistance.

Residents reached by the BBC said that the complete closure of the road linking Sekota to Lalibela has compounded the problem, causing humanitarian deprivation—inadequate food, water, shelter, and medical care. As a result, locals have little or no access to key aspects of the nation’s safety net, many children and elderly people are dying, they said.

The Amhara Region Disaster Prevention and Food Security Programme Coordination Office announced this week that 5 million people are in need of emergency assistance in the region. According to the commission, more than 110 mothers, infants and outpatients in the rebel controlled areas lost their lives due to lack of food, water and medicine. The commission said the figure could be higher as it does not have access to all information due to the collapse of the local government structure.

TPLF’s takeover of the area has caused large-scale displacement and an increase in humanitarian needs, Tesfaye Gebre, deputy administrator of the Wag Himra Zone said.”Economic activity has come to a complete standstill. On several occasions, we have made an appeal to the international community for help, but these pleas have fallen on deaf ears. We have been abandoned by the international community,” he said.

Wondimu Wedaj is among the thousands of displaced people sheltering in schools in Bahir Dar town, the capital of Amhara region. He says that because of the outbreak of severe famine in the area, people from his area, Gazgibla woreda are leaving in droves in search of humanitarian assistance, only the physically challenged have remained. “Fathers are sending their little children to Ebnat and Bahrdar in the hope that they would be spared, however even arriving there they are not getting the aid they sought for”, he says. Ato Wondimu says that in all the 21 kebeles in the woreda, at least one or two people are dying of hunger each day. ‘People tried to manage for sometime by helping each other out, sharing whatever food they  were left with, but as supplies were running out, they had to limit their assistance to those severely afflicted. Some tried to survive by begging door-to-door but at the time when i’m speaking, we don’t know in what situation they are as we left the village ,” he told the BBC Amharic.

The government communication officer Ato Solomon has confirmed that people were indeed dying of hunger in the area, but added that the exact figure of death tolls were hard to come by because of the difficulty of doing investigation. He has anecdotally cited the death of three acquaintances whose funeral wake he has attended.