Kenya announced Tuesday that flights between Nairobi and Mogadishu had been suspended, just days after Somalia said diplomatic ties with its neighbour had been normalised following months of tension.

The Kenya Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA) said commercial flights to and from Somalia would be paused for three months, without giving a reason.

“All flights between Kenya and Somalia are suspended expect medevac flights and United Nations flights on humanitarian missions only,” the regulator said..

KCAA director general Gilbert Kibe told correspondents the suspension was “a decision by the government” but gave no further details.

The directive appeared catch some Somali aviation officials and travel agents by surprise.

“We had not been given a prior notice, and there’s been no explanation about the reason so far,” an airport tower operator in Mogadishu told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The suspension comes a day after Somalia said shipments of khat from Kenya remained on hold. Khat is a narcotic leaf popular in Somalia.

Somalia announced last week that bilateral ties with Kenya had been restored, citing “the interests of good neighbourliness” as motivating its decision.

Nairobi said it took note of the statement and was looking forward “to further normalisation of relations by the Somali authorities.”

Mogadishu cut off diplomatic relations in December after Nairobi hosted the political leadership of Somaliland, a breakaway state not recognised by Somalia’s central government.

Somalia has long bristled over what it calls Kenya’s meddling in regions over its border, while Nairobi has accused Mogadishu of using it as a scapegoat for its own political problems.

The pair have also engaged in a long-running territorial dispute over a stretch of the Indian Ocean claimed by both nations believed to hold valuable deposits of oil and gas, and have sought international arbitration over the matter.

A deliberate “campaign” to prevent farming is unfolding in Ethiopia’s war-hit Tigray, a top regional official said, warning that the result will be “starvation.”

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sent troops into Tigray in November to topple the region’s once dominant ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).

“There is a campaign that has been started to prevent farming. Regrettably, this campaign is being done by some of those tasked with law enforcement,” Abebe Gebrehiwot, deputy head of Tigray’s interim government, said in an interview with a state-run network that aired Monday night.

The effort includes telling Tigrayan farmers they aren’t allowed to farm and blocking seeds from reaching parts of the northern region, said Abebe, an official appointed by the Addis Ababa government who is in charge of economic affairs.

Affected areas include Shire, currently home to tens of thousands of displaced Tigrayans, and Hawzen, which has seen intense fighting in recent days, he said.

Vehicles transporting seeds are being blocked from moving beyond an area known as Kobo, just south of Tigray, he said.

“Efforts to prevent the entry of seeds and efforts to stop farming have no other message than perhaps, ‘Let the people of Tigray perish with starvation,'” Abebe said in the interview with Tigray TV.

Abebe did not specify who was behind the “campaign,” but his comments pointed to some of the tensions in the region.

Prime Minister Abiy had promised the fighting — which he said came in response to TPLF attacks on army camps — would end quickly.

But more than six months later fighting continues and world leaders are warning of a pending humanitarian catastrophe.

In addition to the Ethiopian military, troops from Eritrea and from Ethiopia’s Amhara region — which borders Tigray to the south — are active in the conflict.

Last month AFP obtained documents from the interim government indicating that Eritrean soldiers were blocking and looting aid in Tigray, an allegation Asmara denied.

‘Significant strides’ –

Abiy’s government, for its part, says normalcy is returning while highlighting its efforts to provide food and other aid.

On Saturday his office said “significant strides” had been made towards reconstruction.

And on Tuesday his office said that the latest round of aid had reached 2.7 million people with “food and other essential items.”

“We welcome the international community’s support in efforts to scale up humanitarian assistance and close existing gaps,” it said on Twitter.

Last week Mitiku Kassa, head of Ethiopia’s national disaster commission, told a press conference that foreign aid groups were intentionally playing up the gravity of the humanitarian situation.

“International agencies are in a rush to collect wealth just like in Syria and Yemen. They believe that unless they shout, aid won’t come to Ethiopia,” he said.

“There is international competition. It’s an industry.”

More than one million people in southern Madagascar are facing acute food insecurity as the region grapples with its worst drought in four decades, the United Nations said Tuesday.

Five straight years of low rainfall have wiped out harvests and hampered access to food, compounding the effects of erosion caused by deforestation and devastating sandstorms.

“Around 1.14 million people in the south of Madagascar are facing high levels of acute food insecurity,” the World Food Programme (WFP) and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said in a joint statement.

Almost 14,000 of these people have been classed in category five, the highest level of the UN’s food scarcity ranks — a first for Madagascar since the scale was introduced in 2016.

“With each day that passes, more lives are at stake as hunger tightens its grip,” the statement said.

UN agencies are seeking to draw attention to a humanitarian crisis it says “risks being invisible”.

The Indian Ocean island nation’s borders have been shut since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, making it difficult for aid agencies to provide relief.

Acute malnutrition rates are rising in the worst-affected Amboasary Atsimo district, where up to three quarters of the population have been affected by a disastrous cocktail of drought, sandstorms, pests and the impact of Covid-19.

“It is extremely bad. Children are starving, children are dying,” said WFP operations director Amer Daoudi, adding that he met a mother carrying an eight-month-old child who appeared just two months old.

The famine has triggered an exodus with entire villages “shutting down”, Daoudi said.

Most of southern Madagascar’s population relies on agriculture, livestock and fishing.

Food production has been dramatically low since 2019.

“Years of poor harvests driven by drought upon drought… have pushed people to the brink,” warned FAO emergencies and resilience director Dominique Burgeon.