Tedros gave a press conference before the United Nations correspondents’ association and at the end of his speech revealed that he had been about to cancel it because he was in a “difficult moment” on a personal level.
“I have been informed that my uncle was killed by the Eritrean army,” he told reporters.
The head of the WHO explained that fifty other people were also killed in the military incursion in which his relative died.
“I hope that the peace agreement is maintained and this madness stops,” he said.
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The Ethiopian government and the Tigre authorities signed a ceasefire on November 2 after two years of fighting.
Several organizations have described this conflict as “one of the deadliest in the world.”
More than two million people have been displaced and hundreds of thousands are on the brink of famine, according to the UN.
Tedros, a Tigrian native and a former Ethiopian Minister of Health and Foreign Affairs, has repeatedly called for peace and unrestricted access for humanitarian aid to the region.
The entrance WHO Director tells that his uncle was “murdered” in the Ethiopian region of Tigré was first published on newspaper TODAY.