U.S. President Joe Biden is sending Senator Chris Coons to Ethiopia to convey the President’s concerns over the humanitarian crisis in the Tigray region.
The Senator will meet with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and the African Union over the crisis in the Tigray region where thousands have died following the fighting.
Advertisement
“Senator Coons will convey President Biden’s grave concerns about the humanitarian crisis and human rights abuses in the Tigray region and the risk of broader instability in the Horn of Africa,” Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in a statement on Thursday.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken described the acts carried out in the region as ethnic cleansing, an allegation rejected by Ethiopia.
“(The accusation) is a completely unfounded and spurious verdict against the Ethiopian government,” Ethiopia’s foreign ministry said on March 13, reacting to the allegation of ethnic cleansing.
The ministry further stated, “Nothing during or after the end of the main law enforcement operation in Tigray can be identified or defined by any standards as a targeted, intentional ethnic cleansing against anyone in the region. The Ethiopian government vehemently opposes such accusations.”
Following the fight, thousands of people have died, hundreds of thousands have been forced from their homes and there are shortages of food, water and medicine in Tigray, a region of more than 5 million people.
The government has said that most fighting has ceased but has acknowledged there are still isolated incidents of shooting.