Europe to Airlift Relief Aid to Ethiopia
The European Communities will mount a new airlift of emergency food supplies to Ethiopia next week to help it to fight a new crisis, a spokesman of the Executive Commission said on Thursday.
He said the airlift was scheduled to last two months but could be extended if other donors joined in.
The Communities’ development commissioner, Lorenzo Natali, told a news conference the crisis threatens to be more serious than the 1984-85 famine.
“The regions are doubly isolated because of inadequate transport routes and a very grave state of civil war,” he said. “We have decided the only immediate solution to make the aid arrive in time is to transport it by air.”
Natali said the regions of Tigre and Eritrea have lost between 80% and 100% of their harvests, and about 6.5 million Ethiopians were threatened by famine.
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