Ethiopia

Turkey's educational Maarif Foundation put its campus in Ethiopia into the service of the local government to help its fight against the deadly coronavirus.

Dormitory, cafeteria and health facility buildings of the campus in the eastern Harar city were transferred to the Harar administration to be used to quarantine and treat patients during the outbreak, the foundation said.

Conflict and disaster forced more than 33 million people to flee within their own countries last year, putting them at greater risk amid the global COVID-19 pandemic, monitors said on April 28.    

More than 60,000 Turkish citizens have been brought back home from around the world during the novel coronavirus pandemic, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu has said.

"Until today, we have brought more than 60,000 of our citizens home," Çavuşoğlu said in a tweet on late April 25.

Turkey's president on April 24 sent a letter to the head of the Armenian Patriarchate, assuring equal treatment regardless of belief and identity in the country.

In a letter to Patriarch Sahak Mashalian, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan commemorated Ottoman Armenians who died during World War I, conveying his condolences to their descendants.

Millions around the world are already relying heavily on food aid to survive, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has warned.

David Beasley, head of the (WFP), said urgent action was needed to avoid a worldwide catastrophe.

The report estimates that the number of people starving could almost double - from 135 million to more than 250 million.

The President of the country has already signed an amnesty decree.

Ethiopia Attorney General Adanech Abebe said more than 4,000 prisoners are to be released in order to prevent the spread of coronavirus in prisons in the country.

Sixty-four people believed to be migrants from Ethiopia have been found dead in a container attached to a truck in Mozambique, provincial migration authorities and the police said on March 24.

The Turkish government has been extending its measures against the novel coronavirus outbreak, from suspended flights and limited work hours to more stringent disinfection works, as the death toll increased to 30 on March 22 with a total of 1,236 cases.

Meskerem Tesfaye, a mother of two who is expecting another child, returned home after attending service at St. Mary's Church in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.

The living room was filled with the fragrant smell of incense. The floor was covered with loose grass as part of the traditional Ethiopian coffee ceremony for get-togethers, and coffee was ready.

Somalia has declared a state of emergency due to the invasion of locusts in the Horn of Africa, France's press reported, citing a statement by the Somali Ministry of Agriculture.

Locusts destroy crops in one of the poorest and most vulnerable regions of the world.

Somalia is the first country in the region to declare an emergency over the infestation.