Fighting resumes in Ethiopia's Tigray region

Fighting has resumed in Ethiopia's Tigray region, preventing international humanitarian relief from reaching civilians caught up in the fighting between Tigrayan rebels and the Ethiopian government allied with troops from neighboring  Eritrea.

Sporadic shelling could be heard north of the town of Agula approximately 40 kilometres north of the regional capital Mekele.

The Ethiopian military blocked the road north to food aid convoys for the UN World Food Programme, including Doctors Without Borders, and World Vision, citing safety concerns.

Meanwhile, the head of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, in his first public comments on the war in the country's Tigray region, sharply criticized Ethiopia's actions, saying he believed it was genocide.

A researcher working with Mekele University to document some of the war crimes being committed, who was blocked along with his team from the Emergency Response Research Team, said: "The Ethiopian soldiers and the Eritrean soldiers don't have a religion. They are doing very bad things here in Tigray."

Ethiopia's government said it was "deeply dismayed" by the deaths of civilians, blaming the former Tigray leaders and claiming normality was returning in the region of some six million people. It has denied widespread profiling and targeting of Tigrayans.