Word: assab
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Last week, Mengistu made some promising moves. He ordered increased daily processing of supplies at Assab, Ethiopia's largest port, where 100,000 tons of grain have been stockpiled and are going to waste. He also announced that 70% of the country's commercial trucks would be made available for shuttling relief goods from Assab to the parched heartlands...
...final sad irony of Ethiopia's predicament that, after a decade of drought, relief workers are, for the moment, praying for little rain. Early last week, torrential downpours damaged 5% of the supplies stranded at Assab. Worse still, heavy rains expected in many areas within the next two months will render roads muddy and impassable for relief trucks. Above all, they will increase the likelihood that both contagious diseases and death by exposure could sweep through the crowded camps...
Despite such harrowing assessments, some encouraging developments began last week to suggest that the relief pipeline was growing more effective. The country's main port, Assab, where supplies had been fatally logjammed last month, began processing shipments at ten times its former capacity. Two elderly but effective British Hercules transport planes shuttled supplies between the capital and the devastated areas. The government also waived handling charges on all ships and planes bringing relief. Yet even if all of Ethiopia's food needs were met, it seemed unlikely that more than 20% of those gripped by famine could...
Late last week U.S. and British planes jammed with food and medical supplies began arriving in Ethiopia. Until this month, shipments had remained stalled in port in Assab, and tons of grain were reported to be rotting on the dockside...
...President Hosni Mubarak, as the prime suspect. Central to this view is the fact that a Libyan cargo ship, the Ghat, entered the northern end of the canal on July 6, then traveled southward through the canal and the Gulf of Suez to the Ethiopian port of Assab on the Red Sea, where it unloaded its cargo and eventually headed back toward the canal. According to Egyptian officials, that round trip should have taken the Ghat about eight days. In fact, it took 15 days. Long before the Ghat left the canal on its northward voyage, several ships suffered explosions...