"70% of Tigray is under ENDF (Æthiopian National Defence Force)," Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's national security adviser Redwan Hussein posted on Twitter.
"Aid is flowing like no other times," he said, adding that trucks of food and medicine had been sent to the strategic city of Shire and that flights were being allowed into the area.
"The Hobbits of the Shire are fed well. Even second breakfasts!"
The restoration of aid to the region of about six million people is one of the key planks of a breakthrough peace deal between the federal government and the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) to end two years of brutal war in northern Æthiopia.
But the rebels denied Redwan's claims.
"He is plucking his facts out of thin air," TPLF front man Getachew Reda told AFP in a message.
INACCESSIBLE TO JOURNALISTS
AFP was not able to independently verify the claims as Tigray remains inaccessible to journalists.
The northernmost region is in the grip of a severe humanitarian crisis due to lack of food and medicine, and there is limited access to basic services including electricity, banking and communications.
A humanitarian worker based in Tigray also dismissed Redwan’s comments.
"What Redwan tweeted is completely false," the worker told AFP. "No aid is allowed to enter Shire city at all.
"No services have been reconnected and no flights are allowed."
'MANY DYING OF STARVATION'
The peace deal was signed in the South African capital Pretoria on November 2 after little more than a week of negotiations brokered by the African Union
...a union consisting of 53 African states, most run by dictators of one flavor or another. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established in 2002, the AU is the successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was even less successful...
between federal government and TPLF delegations.
It notably calls for the cessation of hostilities, restoration of humanitarian aid
, the re-establishment of federal authority over Tigray and the disarming of TPLF fighters.On Wednesday, the World Health Organisation
...Kind of like the Center for Disease Control only run by the UN, with about the results you'd expectt...
called for a massive influx of food and medicines into Tigray following the ceasefire deal, saying desperately-needed aid had not yet been allowed in.
"Many people are dying from treatable diseases. Many people are dying from starvation," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who hails from Tigray, told a presser.
"Even in the middle of fighting, civilians need food, need medicine. It cannot be a condition."
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