Abiy Ahmed

Ethiopia has struck a "historic" agreement to use the main port in Somalia's breakaway region of Somaliland, as the landlocked country seeks more access to sea channels for shipping, officials said Monday.

The World Food Program has suspended aid distribution in the northern Ethiopian town of Kombolcha after "mass looting" of its warehouses blamed on Tigrayan forces, a U.N. spokesman said on Dec. 8.

Gunmen killed more than 150 people in an attack last week in a restive part of western Ethiopia that sparked deadly reprisals, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said on Aug. 26. 

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Dragged into a conflict not of their making, members of Ethiopia's Qemant ethnic group say their only choice was fleeing to Sudan - marking another bleak turn in a widening war.

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Draped in sacred white cloth, the procession drifted silently towards a priest calling the faithful to celebrate the Archangel Michael, a revered saint in Ethiopia.

Around dawn, thousands of worshippers gathered at the church in Amhara, the second-largest region of Ethiopia, which is staging long-awaited elections on June 20.

Gunmen killed more than 100 people in an attack on Dec. 23 in western Ethiopia, the national human rights body said, the latest in a series of deadly assaults in the area.

About 2.3 million children in Ethiopia's Tigray region do not have access to humanitarian assistance since a conflict started early November, according to the United Nations Children's Fund.

In a statement late on Dec. 15, UNICEF said the situation will worsen if access to the children is delayed.

Rockets launched from Ethiopia's northern Tigray region have again targeted the capital of Eritrea, diplomats told AFP on Nov. 29, while the U.S. embassy in Asmara reported there were "six explosions" in the city.

The 2019 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, the Nobel Committee announced on its website.

Ethiopia's army chief and the president of a key region have been shot dead in a wave of violence highlighting the political instability in the country as Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed tries to push through reforms.