ADDIS ABABA, May 27 (Xinhua) -- The overall situation in northern Ethiopia is generally calm but it remains tense and unpredictable, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) said Friday.

The UNOCHA, in its periodic situation update, said humanitarian partners have continued to move additional humanitarian supplies into Ethiopia's conflict-affected northernmost Tigray region with three convoys arriving in the regional capital Mekelle during the reporting week, with a total of 319 trucks.

The UNOCHA said the humanitarian aid convoy constituted the highest number of trucks entering the region in a single week since June 2021.

According to figures from the UNOCHA, more than 9 million people need food assistance in conflict-hit northern Ethiopia and food assistance will be required throughout 2022 across northern Ethiopia.

It said seeds and fertilizers are urgently needed to farmers in Northern Ethiopia as the East African country's main planting season, from May to early July, will start soon.

The UNOCHA warned that failure to provide the much-needed agriculture inputs during the planting window can reduce crop yield by at least half, from an estimated 9.6 million metric tons to 4 million metric tons, and worsen the current high levels of food insecurity in the Tigray region.

The UNOCHA further emphasized the need to reconstruct and rehabilitate schools that were damaged by the conflict across parts of Ethiopia's Amhara, Tigray and Afar regions.

According to the UNOCHA, the conflict affected 4,107 schools in Amhara, of which 25 percent were completely damaged, affecting more than 1.8 million children; and at least 200 schools in Afar were damaged affecting more than 150,000 students. In Tigray, more than 1,000 schools were also damaged affecting an estimated 160,000 students. Enditem

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