Ethiopia wants to pass a supplementary budget worth 122 billion birr ($2.5 billion) to help finance program to rebuild areas destroyed by war and provide humanitarian aid, the finance ministry said on Thursday.
The budget is much larger than previously reported in the heavily indebted country. The government-affiliated media outlet Fana said on Monday that the government was seeking a $102 million supplementary budget “to be used for rehabilitation of people affected by war and conflict.”
“The additional budget will be spent on security of the country, humanitarian aid … and other necessary government works,” the ministry said in a statement on its Facebook page.
The request will have to be approved by parliament which is expected to give its approval, but the ministry did not say how the money would be raised.
The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and the federal government and its allies have been at war for more than a year.
The ongoing conflict has killed thousands and displaced millions.
Among those who have borne the brunt of the conflict are humanitarian workers.
The UN refugee agency UNHCR said in a statement on Thursday that one of its staff members had been killed in northern Ethiopia, but gave no details.
Filippo Grandi, the head of UNHCR, tweeted that the staff member had been killed on Dec. 28.
Beirut blast judge postpones interrogations over dispute
The Lebanese judge leading the investigation into the deadly 2020 Beirut port explosion said Monday he has postponed questioning of officials over a dispute with the country’s top prosecutor.
Judge Tarek Bitar resumed his probe last month after a 13-month hiatus amid vehement political and legal pushback, which now threatens to derail the investigation once again.
Reopening the case, he had charged several senior former and incumbent officials, including Prosecutor General Ghassan Oueidat.
Oueidat retaliated by charging the judge with “usurping power” and insubordination, and slapped Bitar with a travel ban.
Bitar told reporters on Monday he has postponed all interrogations planned for February due to the “lack of cooperation” from the prosecutor’s office, without setting new dates.
“There are charges accusing me of usurping power that must be resolved,” he said from his office in the Lebanese capital.
If these charges “are proven, then I must be held to account, and if the contrary happens, then I must continue the investigation,” Bitar argued.
One of history’s biggest non-nuclear explosions, the blast on August 4, 2020 destroyed much of Beirut port and surrounding areas, killing more than 215 people and injuring over 6,500.
Authorities said the mega-explosion was caused by a fire in a portside warehouse where a vast stockpile of the industrial chemical ammonium nitrate had been haphazardly stored for years.
The arm-wrestling between Bitar and Oueidat is the latest in Lebanon’s mounting woes, facing dire economic and political crises.
Observers fear the spat over the blast probe could lead to the outright collapse of the judicial system — one of the country’s last fully functioning state institutions.
Ancient Gaziantep Castle damaged in devastating Turkey earthquake
The deadly earthquake that struck Turkey early Monday destroyed part of the ancient Gaziantep Castle, with pictures online showing a large section of the building sliding off a cliff. Before and after pictures showed the extensive damage with debris blocking a nearby road. For all the latest headlines follow our Google News channel online or via the app. Part of the thousands-year-old Gaziantep Castle, a historic and touristic site, was destroyed after a 7.8-magnitude struck southern Turkey also affecting northern Syria.
The Ancient Gaziantep Castle before it was destroyed by the earthquake. (Twitter)
Ethiopia holds referendum on creation of a 12th regional state in the south
Ethiopians were voting on Monday in a referendum on the creation of a 12th regional state in the south of the country, the third such ballot in under four years.
More than three million people are registered to vote in areas that currently fall in the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region (SNNPR), according to election board figures cited by state media.
Results are due on February 15. Since Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed came to power in 2018, two new regional states have already been carved out: Sidama in 2019 and South West in 2021.
Both separated from the SNNPR, a mosaic of minority ethnic groups and scene of tension and violence in recent years.
Africa’s second most populous country has faced several chal-lenges to its unity and stability, including the two-year war in Tigray that ended with a peace deal in November and an ongoing insurgency in the largest region of Oromia.
The current constitution adopted in 1995, four years after the fall of the military-Marxist Derg regime, had initially divided Ethiopia into nine regional states, cut out along ethno-linguistic lines and enjoying considerable power in a federal system.
This “ethnic federalism” was supposed to offer a degree of autonomy to the 80 or so ethnic communities that make up Ethiopia, but has been accused by critics of exacerbating inter-communal tensions.