NAIROBI / ADDIS ABABA — Attacks in northern Ethiopia that reportedly killed children, including a newborn, are pushing the region's fragile health system closer to collapse, the World Health Organization's Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned on Monday, November 2. In a statement posted on social media, Tedros said reports of attacks on civilians in Ethiopia's Amhara and Tigray regions were 'deeply disturbing,' pointing to children reportedly killed at the Jaari 2 displacement camp in Amhara and several people reportedly killed while gathering food in Rama town, in neighbouring Tigray, the Associated Press reported.

Source: Associated Press via Reflector

The Jaari camp attack Tedros cited was reported last week, when sources involved in the rescue operation told Reuters at least 15 people, several of them children, died in drone strikes on the camp. Read: Drone strikes on Ethiopia displacement camp kill at least 15

Two attacks, two regions — and tolls that differ by source

Addis Standard, which has reported both attacks in detail, said at least 16 civilians were killed and 22 injured on October 29 when a drone struck the Hayiq Jari 2 camp for internally displaced people in Amhara. A day later, on October 30, at least 12 civilians were killed in Rama town, Central Tigray, when a drone struck people gathering to collect sorghum scattered from a grain truck hit by an earlier drone strike, local sources told the newspaper; a witness who spoke to AFP reported 13 deaths, while a medical source at a nearby hospital confirmed 11 fatalities and said two more deaths had been reported. Tedros himself gave no casualty totals or dates and did not identify who carried out the attacks, AP noted, and no government response or public statement addressing the reported attacks was immediately available.

Source: Addis Standard

'Closer to collapse': what Tedros said about the hospitals

'The violence in northern Ethiopia is pushing an already fragile health system closer to collapse,' Tedros said, according to the UN's account of his warning. 'Hospitals face shortages of health workers, medicines, and equipment. Ambulance services are severely limited. Insecurity is obstructing the delivery of life-saving medical supplies to some areas.' He stressed that WHO and its partners 'are working around the clock to deliver additional much needed medical supplies to all the affected regions,' and warned that if the fighting continues, more people are likely to lose access to essential healthcare, including emergency services, maternal and child healthcare and treatment for diseases.

Source: UN News

Background: a peace deal in pieces

Fresh fighting between Ethiopian government forces and rebel groups resumed in September in the two northern regions and in Afar, nearly four years after the November 2022 peace agreement between the federal government and the Tigray People's Liberation Front ended the Tigray war — a deal AP says the renewed fighting has effectively shattered, stoking fears of a wider conflict. The government also faces armed opposition elsewhere: Fano, a loose network of Amhara militias, has battled federal forces in Amhara since 2023, and the Oromo Liberation Army operates in Oromia, where Ethiopia's Orthodox Church said at least 60 Orthodox Christians were killed in separate attacks. Guterres has called on the parties to spare the civilian population and critical infrastructure and to agree without delay to a cessation of hostilities as a first step towards ending the conflict, UN News reported.

Source: UN News / Associated Press

What happens next

For the WHO, the immediate work is logistical: moving medical supplies into areas where insecurity keeps ambulances and delivery trucks off the roads, while its chief — himself an ethnic Tigrayan who once served as Ethiopia's health and foreign minister — uses public warnings to press for civilian protection. Whether that pressure, and the Secretary-General's call for a cessation of hostilities, changes anything on the ground will be measured in the coming days by two things: whether aid convoys actually reach the northern hospitals Tedros described, and whether the drone strikes on civilian gathering points stop. For now, neither the tolls nor responsibility for the attacks have been independently settled, and Awaaz Punjab will update this story if the Ethiopian government responds.