Nairobi-based East Africa correspondent Cara Anna and chief photographer Ben Curtis drew from a dozen exclusive interviews, plus photos and video from sources in Mekele, the capital of Ethiopia’s Tigray region, to paint the most personal and detailed portrait yet of life under a deadly government blockade.
The increasing death and deprivation in the Tigray region have been largely hidden from the world. But Anna and Curtis in Nairobi, and two stringers based in Ethiopia — unnamed for their security — obtained interviews with Mekele residents, internal aid documents and rare images showing children suffering from malnutrition and lack of medications.
An unidentified mother and child are seen in the malnutrition ward at the Ayder Referral Hospital in Mekele, in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia, Sept. 28, 2021, in an image provided anonymously, made from video.
AP Photo
Mizan Wolde carries her daughter, Genet Mehari, 5, receiving therapeutic milk for malnutrition, at the Ayder Referral Hospital in Mekele, in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia, Sept. 28, 2021, in an image provided anonymously, made from video.
AP Photo
Mizan Wolde sits with her daughter, Genet Mehari, 5, at the Ayder Referral Hospital in Mekele, in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia, Sept. 28, 2021, in an image provided anonymously, made from video. “There are no drugs,” said Wolde.
AP Photo
Nurse Tekleab explains the situation in the malnutrition ward of the Ayder Referral Hospital in Mekele, in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia, Sept. 28, 2021, in an image provided anonymously, made from video.
AP Photo
Rahwa Mehari, 4, who originally suffered from malnutrition, then developed a cerebral tuberculoma according to her father and her medical records, is treated at the Ayder Referral Hospital in Mekele, in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia, Oct. 4, 2021, in a photo provided anonymously. “It’s been three months since she came here,” her father said. “She was doing OK, then the medication ceased. She is now taking only oxygen, nothing else.”
AP Photo
Rahwa Mehari, 4, is comforted by her father at the Ayder Referral Hospital in Mekele, in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia, Monday, Oct. 4, 2021. Her father, Mehari Tesfa, from the Kilte Awulaelo district, says he has not been able to farm or feed his family since Eritrean troops stole his water pump and generator during the war.
AP Photo
Using fragile periods of limited internet connectivity to the region otherwise cut off from communications, they spoke with suffering parents, university lecturers, a Catholic priest and others for details that made the story widely used and shared: A woman who killed herself because she was no longer able to feed her children, desperate people going directly from an aid distribution site to the roadside to sell humanitarian items, the flour and oil for Communion bread soon to run out. “Gut-wrenching ... It was as if you had managed to make it to Tigray,” one reader commented.
Last month, the AP was first to report on deaths from starvation under the blockade, but this story showed the wider ravages of the lack of medication, fuel and cash. The director general of the World Health Organization tweeted the story to his 1.5 million followers, just one of several high-profile shares.