WHO Chief Says Violence in Northern Ethiopia Is Pushing a Fragile Health System Closer to Collapse After Reports of Civilian Deaths

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World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said reports of attacks on civilians in Ethiopia’s Amhara and Tigray regions are deeply disturbing and warned that renewed fighting is pushing an already fragile northern health system closer to collapse.

In a Nov. 2 post on X, Tedros wrote that children, including a newborn, were among those reportedly killed at the Jaari 2 displacement camp in Amhara, and that in another attack in Rama, Tigray, several people were reportedly killed while trying to get food. He did not give casualty totals or dates for either incident and did not name who carried out the attacks. “While these are the latest incidents, drone attacks and civilian casualties have tragically become frequent across Ethiopia,” he wrote. “The violence in northern Ethiopia is pushing an already fragile health system closer to collapse. 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.”

UN News and DW Amharic carried the same warning. Tedros said WHO and UN partners were working around the clock to deliver more medical supplies to the affected regions, and that as fighting continues more people are likely to lose emergency care, maternal and child health services and treatment for disease. “Civilians must be protected. Health workers and humanitarian supplies must be allowed to reach those in need,” he wrote. “The most courageous choose peace. The best medicine is peace.”

The Jaari and Rama strikes sit inside a wider pattern that Zegabi and other outlets have already reported. Residents and a hospital source told the BBC that a drone strike on a South Wollo camp for people driven out of Wollega killed 18 people, a toll Zegabi covered on Oct. 29. Witnesses told BBC and AFP that a drone strike killed at least 12 people gathering spilled grain in Tigray’s Rama, covered here on Oct. 31. Tedros’s statement does not confirm those earlier tallies and should not be read as a new independent count; it is a public health warning that names the same geography after those reports.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres had already said he was appalled by recent attacks on civilians, including health facilities, and called on the parties to spare civilians and critical infrastructure and to agree without delay to a cessation of hostilities, UN News reported. Fresh fighting between Ethiopian Government forces and armed groups resumed in Amhara, Tigray and Afar in September, nearly four years after the Pretoria peace deal.

On X, Addis Standard’s Amharic account (@addisstandardam) summarized Tedros’s warning that continued fighting in Amhara and Tigray is pushing Ethiopia’s weak health system toward collapse. Separate posts blamed federal forces. Dani Kibru (@yeabatulij), whose bio stresses “Humanity before Ethnicity,” wrote in Amharic that “አገዛዙ ድሮን ና ጀት ላይ ብቻ ጥገኛ ሆኗል። እግረኛው ተሸንፏል። የድሮን ጥቃት ተጠንቀቁ !!,” roughly that the regime has become dependent only on drones and jets, that its ground force has been defeated, and that people should beware of drone strikes. The Nation (@TheNation1993) posted in Tigrigna about drone strikes on civilians and displaced people at Jaari/Wuchale, accusing Abiy Ahmed’s Regime of hitting children, mothers and the sick after failing on the ground. Those posts are commentary circulating on X; Zegabi has not independently verified their claims about who fired which munition.

Abiy Ahmed’s government has not, in the reporting reviewed for this draft, issued a detailed public reply to Tedros’s Nov. 2 warning. Earlier federal and regional statements on individual strikes have denied targeting civilians or blamed armed groups; those earlier lines are not repeated here as a response to WHO.

Sources