Police in northwestern Turkey arrested a suspect amid a probe into migrant smuggling as 12 irregular migrants were held in a vehicle, according to security sources on Wednesday.

Police in Kocaeli province stopped a minibus as part of the country's measures to stop migrant smuggling, said the source on condition of anonymity due to restrictions on speaking to the media.

A total of 12 irregular migrants including Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and Afghan nationals were held in the minibus.

The irregular migrants were taken to the provincial migration authority.

The driver, identified as H. A. was arrested and police seized the minibus.

Turkey has been a key transit point for asylum seekers who want to cross into Europe to start new lives, especially those fleeing war and persecution./aa

A dozen people are dancing around a bonfire in a yard between two large warehouses in São Paulo. It’s early November and members of Quilombaque—a Black community hub in Perus, a poor neighborhood on the city’s northern fringes—are celebrating. They’ve raised 50% of the funds they need to buy the space they’ve occupied for the past decade and avoid eviction by the owner, who is selling up. As the fire spits embers up to a dark sky, and a steady drum beat marks out a rhythm, the group sings: “I will build my refuge, I will build my place, I will build my quilombo.”

The word quilombo–derived from languages brought to Brazil by enslaved Africans–was the name given to rural communities established by those who escaped slavery in the centuries before Brazil abolished it in 1888—the last country in the Americas to do so. At least 3,500 of those rural quilombos still exist. But today, quilombo is taking on a wider meaning. Young Black Brazilians say they need to form new communities of Black resistance to deal with a society still shaped at every level by the legacy of slavery.

Racial tensions in Brazil were inflamed by the 2018 election of far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, who on the campaign trail compared Black quilombo members to cattle and said “they don’t even serve to procreate.” But the president is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Brazil’s systemic racism. Around 56% of Brazilians identify as Black—the largest population of African descent outside of Africa—yet Black people make up just 18% of congress, 4.7% of executives in Brazil’s 500 largest companies, 75% of murder victims and 75% of those killed by police. Things are getting worse. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Black Brazilians, who already earn just 57% of what white Brazilians do on average, have died and lost their jobs at a higher rate. Police killings rose to 5,804 in 2019—almost six times more than comparative figures for the U.S. Bolsonaro pushed forward an anti-crime bill last year that included a blanket “self-defense” justification for the use of force by police; the congress passed it with some limitations in December 2019, though critics still say it grants officers significant impunity. Activists and academics have accused the Brazilian state of employing a “death policy” against the Black population.

But on Nov. 20, Vice President Hamilton Mourão claimed that “racism doesn’t exist in Brazil.” He was responding to protests over the brutal beating and killing of João Freitas, an unarmed Black man, by security guards at a grocery store in the city of Porto Alegre, which was captured on security cameras. For his part, President Bolsonaro said social justice groups protesting over racism were “attempting to bring tensions into our country that are foreign to our history.”

In an era of overt racial injustice ignored by those in power, Black Brazilians are creating spaces that explicitly celebrate Black identity and power their resistance to racism. Black people in cities are forming urban quilombos, while others are pushing to aquilombar—the word’s verb form – on social media and in art and literature. Black political activists have discussed forming a quilombo in congress. “Our main goal is to fight the genocide of the Black population,” says Clébio Ferreira, 36, who founded Quilombaque with his brother in 2005 in response to poverty and violence faced by Black youth in Perus, where he has lived most of his life. “When we build a quilombo, we are coming together to build a new world.”

The Bolsonaro Administration’s denial of racism in Brazil has historical roots. As Brazil emerged from the slavery era in the 1900s, elites in the country promoted an idea of the country as a “racial democracy”—a supposedly harmonious mixing of Indigenous, white European, and Black African cultures. But at the same time, politicians, the media and academics also encouraged the descendants of enslaved Africans and indigenous communities to marry and have children with the descendants of white colonizers, as well as an influx of European immigrants, in order to produce increasingly lighter-skinned generations and “whiten” the country. Some conservative Brazilians still idealize their country as a racial democracy, where racial discrimination or conflict cannot exist.

Now, Black Brazilians are increasingly looking to another aspect of history for lessons on how to deal with a racist country. Of the 5 million enslaved Africans brought to Brazil, tens of thousands managed to flee plantations. They settled in rural areas, forming communities outside of white society. To describe these new settlements, they borrowed the word “quilombo” (often loosely translated as “war camp”) from Bantu languages spoken by some communities in sub-Saharan africa, says Stéfane Souto, a cultural researcher in Salvador, northern Brazil. “The word has many meanings, but basically it’s a social practice carried out by nomadic warriors; it can refer to both the warriors themselves and the territories where they meet.”

The largest quilombo in Brazil was Palmares, which existed for much of the 1600s. At its largest Palmares covered 10,000 square miles on Brazil’s northeastern coast and counted 20,000 members. Today it lends its name to the Palmares Cultural Foundation, the state-funded institution set up in 1988 to protect and support quilombo rights.

In the 1970’s, Beatriz Nascimento, an academic and influential figure in Brazil’s 20th Century Black rights movement, began to bring attention to how quilombos could serve the wider cause of anti-racism in Brazil. In articles and the 1989 documentary Ori, she explored the concept of the quilombo and traced the links between Black Brazilian communities and the cultural and political traditions of several African countries. “Nascimento knew that quilombos were not fixed places,” says Alex Ratts, an anthropologist and author of a biography on Nascimento. “She was the one who widened the meaning of the term quilombo. In her thinking, there could be quilombos in literature, in history—even a person could be a quilombo.” Today, 25 years after her death, her work is seeing renewed interest from a younger generation. “When people read her work now, they say “that’s what we need to do,” in a country like this, we need to aquilombar,” Ratts says. “It’s not a conversation from people in rural quilombos. It’s a very urban thing, a very contemporary political movement.”

Bianca Santana, a São Paulo-based writer and activist , says the “intensification of the racial conflict” in Brazil has spurred the growth of that movement. “We’re seeing a proliferation of aquilombamentos—in favelas, in universities, in literary movements, in hip hop—because the Black community needs to reorganize,” she says.

In August, Tamara Franklin, a 29 year-old musician based in Minas Gerais state, released an album titled Escape roots for aquilombamento. Franklin says she only recently began to learn about the history of Black people who escaped slavery to form quilombos, and read a lot about them during a COVID-19 lockdown in her home state of Minas Gerais. “When I look at the situation of Black people in Brazil today, I see that escape is still necessary. We still need to flee from these territories, which aren’t always physical, sometimes they’re economic, political, social.”

For her generation, she says, quilombo means “a place where we can meet with our equals and look after each other. Even if it’s not a physical territory.” Art and music about aquilombamento, cultural and political activism workshops, and connection on social media can provide that space, she says.

Urban quilombos, physical spaces for the Black communities to gather for cultural, educational and political activities, have also sprung up around Brazil, primarily in Black-majority favela neighborhoods on the outskirts of cities like Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.

Ferreira says creating São Paulo’s Quilombaque was a way to fight back against the negative image of Blackness that Brazilian society’s historic preference for “whitening” has fostered. When Quilombaque began, he says, Perus didn’t have any cultural spaces. He started putting on drumming sessions and other cultural events like capoeira and art classes. Now, Quilombaque runs a community library and a tourism agency to stimulate the local economy. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, cultural events have been suspended and the center has focused on preparing food baskets for families affected by the pandemic. “The questions we’re working on here are: How can we make a person see themself as Black and have pride in being Black? How can we build that self esteem so a Black person doesn’t lower their head when they pass police officers?”

While a modern concept of the quilombo is growing, the rural communities that inspired it are under attack. Jacira Oliveira, 48, lives in the Galvão quilombo, just a few miles from Bolsonaro’s hometown of Eldorado, in São Paulo state. Having been born there herself, Oliveria has raised six children in the quilombo and serves on the community’s coordinating committee. Founded in the 1830s, beside the Pilões river, Galvão has faced many of the same challenges as other quilombos: state neglect of its infrastructure, high poverty rates and disputes with farmers who attempt to take over their land. In 1982, Oliveria’s cousin was shot dead during one such dispute. Things have improved in recent decades, though, she says. Brazil’s 1988 constitution allowed quilombos to obtain legal rights to their land. Soon after, government bodies were set up to protect and assist quilombos, including the national Palmares Cultural Foundation and a section of São Paulo state’s land agency. In the 2000s, leftist governments introduced social programs that helped support many of the communities.

Today much of that progress is under threat. Oliveira is haunted by Bolsonaro’s words in a campaign speech in Rio de Janeiro in 2017. “I’ve been to a quilombo,” he said. “The lightest afrodescendent there weighed 7 arrobas [a Brazilian measure used for cattle]. They don’t do anything. They don’t even serve to procreate any more.” He added that he would cut funding and land rights for quilombo communities if elected. “His words opened a wound, and it still hasn’t healed,” Oliveira says. “They keep trying to take away our rights, but we’re digging in our heels.”

In 2019, the president installed Sergio Camargo—an outspoken opponent of social justice groups who denies the existence of structural racism —as the head of the Palmares Cultural Foundation. He has dramatically slowed the speed at which the state is granting official recognition to quilombo communities, according to advocates. In July 2020, Bolsonaro vetoed sections of a law that would have required the state to provide emergency financial support to quilombos and Indigenous communities during the pandemic. In September, the government gutted 2021 budgets at the land agency that deals with disputes over territory, slashing 90% of funds for the department responsible for recognizing and compensating quilombos. According to local media, two thirds of the agency’s total budget are now allocated for compensating farmers—a key support base for the president.

“We’re seeing everything we worked for, everything we’ve achieved, undone,” says Selma Dealdina, executive secretary of CONAQ, a national nonprofit representing the vast majority of Brazil’s rural quilombos. While she recognizes the shared fight of all Black anti-racist activists in Brazil, Dealdina cautions that the urban movement celebrating quilombos needs to make sure it also works for the rights and prosperity of rural quilombo communities, and doesn’t just appropriate the term. “Are you actually trying to support quilombos? Buying food from quilombo communities? Reading books by quilombo authors? For me, to aquilombar has to mean helping others. Otherwise, it’s just a trend.”

The moment of more “explicit, naked, crude” racism Brazil is passing through is not a surprise to Black communities, Dealdina says. “We’ve always known it was there. A Black person in this country can’t have a moment of rest, you’ve got to keep your eyes open 25 hours a day,” she says. It won’t change the nature of quilombos, though, which are playing the role they have for centuries, she adds. “We’ll be here resisting, whether in the cities or the countryside. Quilombos are resilience itself.”

For Santana, the writer and activist, Bolsonaro’s election in October 2018 was part of a backlash against advances made not just by quilombos but by Brazil’s entire Black population as a result of social programs and affirmative action policies introduced by lefist governments throughout the 2000s—including racial quotas for university entrance and state jobs. “Before, when Black people didn’t have access to the same rights as white people, Brazil could pretend not to be a racist country through the myth of racial democracy,” she says. “Now, voting for someone who is racist, misogynistic, homophobic, who praises torture and the military regime, suggests many Brazilians are trying to put things back the way they think they ought to be: Black people in subaltern positions.”

Quilombos may help to power an anti-racist political response to the current moment. At Brazil’s municipal elections, political activist group Quilombo Periferico (“quilombo from the outskirts”) ran a collective candidacy of several members for São Paulo’s city council, securing a seat for local campaigner Elaine Mineiro. “Aquilombamento in politics means coming together to defend the rights of Black people, poor people, LGBTQ people—to demand new policy, and affirmative actions that are necessary if you’re going to be anti-racist,” Mineiro says.

Mineiro’s grandfather grew up in a traditional quilombo. She says it’s crucial that Black activists in both cities and rural areas put the history of those communities at the center of their political movements, because Brazilian education and media have tended to erase it in favour of the myth of racial democracy. “They have tried to take our past from us, and the past is where you look to learn,” she says. “It’s extremely important for people to be able to understand why things are the way they are. To understand that society as it is now wasn’t born, it was built. And if it was built it can be rebuilt.”

TIME

One of Huawei's European communications managers has resigned from the Chinese firm over concerns about its role in the surveillance of Muslim Uighurs.

Tommy Zwicky had worked in the company's Danish office for six months and was a former journalist.

It comes after internal Huawei documents were made public, which mentioned a "Uighur alarm" system that it had worked on with Chinese facial-recognition specialist Megvii in 2018.

Huawei said it opposed discrimination.

"We provide general-purpose connectivity products based on recognised industry standards, and we comply with ethics and governance systems around emerging technology," it told the BBC.

"We do not develop or sell systems that identify people by their ethnicity, and we do not condone the use of our technologies to discriminate against or oppress members of any community."

A spokeswoman for Megvii declined to comment, but the firm has previously said its systems are not designed to target or label specific ethnic groups.

It is believed that the Chinese government has detained up to a million Uighurs in Xinjiang province in what the state defines as "re-education camps".

Beijing has consistently denied mistreatment and says the camps are designed to stamp out terrorism and improve employment opportunities.

Disputed title

Mr Zwicky had previously worked for a Danish newspaper, and before that was editor-in-chief of the Danish Broadcasting Corporation.

He officially remains under contract to Huawei until February and is unable to discuss his decision further.

He first announced his departure via Twitter and LinkedIn.

Following this, his boss characterised Mr Zwicky as being a low-level PR manager and Huawei also took issue with Mr Zwicky being described as a vice president of communications, as this signifies a senior role in its corporate structure.

However, articles published at the time of his appointment referred to the fact that this specific title had indeed been created for Mr Zwicky and quoted the chief of Huawei Denmark as saying: "Tommy is a well-known and respected name in the Danish media. With him on board, we feel confident that we can take communication to a new level."

When asked about this, Mr Zwicky told the BBC: "My title was vice president of communications at Huawei Denmark. I have no further comments."

His decision comes a week after French football star Antoine Griezmann ended his sponsorship deal with Huawei after raising his own concerns about "strong suspicions" that the company had been involved in developing an alert system to monitor the Uighurs.

'Confidential' tests

American surveillance research firm IPVM brought to light the Chinese-language documents on 8 December.

They were marked as confidential but were being hosted publicly on Huawei's European website.

The report referenced an "interoperability test [in which] Huawei and Megvii jointly provided a face-recognition solution based on Huawei's video cloud solution. In the solution, Huawei provided servers, storage, network equipment, its FusionSphere cloud platform, cameras and other software and hardware, [while] Megvii provided its dynamic facial-recognition system software".

Among the functions of Megvii's software that the report said Huawei had verified was a "Uighur alert".

IPVM said a separate box added to Megvii's software was capable of determining ethnicity as part of its "face attribute analysis".

The page became inaccessible shortly after the Washington Post asked the firm about its existence.

At the time Huawei said the document had referenced a "test", which had not seen a real-world application.

But the the Post later published a second article which said Huawei's site indicated it had worked with four other companies on products advertised to have ethnicity-tracking capabilities.

In response, Huawei promised to carry out a follow-up investigation, but continued to deny it sold systems that identified people by their ethnicity.

Unsatisfactory response

Concerns about both firm's activities in this area date back further,

The US added Megvii to a trade blacklist in 2019 over concerns that its tech was being used by the Chinese authorities to carry out "repression, mass arbitrary detention, and high-technology surveillance".

And the same year, a group of 13 UK MPs and members of the House of Lords published a letter raising concerns that Huawei was "facilitating a programme of ethnic repression" against the Uighurs.

The BBC has been told that about this time, Westerners working for the firm asked head office for more details about work it was doing for the Chinese authorities in Xinjiang and felt they had never got a satisfactory answer.

But one noted that this it was not uncommon for companies to be wary about discussing sensitive matters with staff./BBC

China's Chang'e-5 mission has returned to Earth with the cargo of rock and "soil" it picked up off the Moon.

A capsule carrying the materials landed in Inner Mongolia shortly after 01:30 local time on Thursday (17:30 GMT, Wednesday).

It's more than 40 years since the American Apollo and Soviet Luna missions brought their samples home.

The new specimens should provide fresh insight on the geology and early history of Earth's satellite.

For China, the successful completion of the Chang'e-5 venture will also be seen as another demonstration of the nation's increasing capability in space.

Recovery teams were quick to move in on the returned capsule. It was first spotted by helicopters using infrared cameras. Support staff following up in SUVs planted a Chinese flag in the snow-covered grassland next to the module.

The Chang'e-5 venture was launched at the end of November.

A probe comprising several elements was sent into orbit around the Moon. These elements then separated, with one half going down to the lunar surface.

The lander system used a scoop and a drill to dig up samples. It's not clear how much, but possibly in the range of 2-4kg.

An ascent vehicle subsequently carried the materials back into lunar orbit where they were transferred to an Earth-return module. This was shepherded home by a fourth element and released just before it had to make the fiery descent through Earth's atmosphere.

Returning from the Moon, the Chang'e-5 module would have been moving much faster than, say, a capsule coming back from the International Space Station.

Engineers had chosen to scrub some of this extra energy by doing an initial "skip" in the atmosphere. This saw the module briefly dip into the gases that shroud our planet, before then plunging much deeper to try to reach Earth's surface.

The Chang'e-5 capsule was targeted to float down on parachute to Siziwang Banner in Inner Mongolia. This is the same location used to bring Chinese astronauts home.

Again, infrared cameras were on hand to follow the action by detecting the heat of the module.

A total of just under 400kg of lunar surface materials were collected by American Apollo astronauts and the Soviets' robotic Luna landers.

But all these samples were very old - more than three billion years in age. Chang'e-5's rock and dust should be quite different.

The Chinese mission targeted a high volcanic region called Mons Rümker in the northwest of the nearside of the Moon.

Samples from this terrain may be no more than 1.2 or 1.3 billion years old, and, as such, should provide additional information on how the Moon is constructed internally.

The samples will also allow scientists to more precisely calibrate the "chronometer" they use to age surfaces on the inner Solar System planets.

This is done by counting craters (the more craters, the older the surface), but it depends on having some definitive dating at a number of locations, and the Apollo and Soviet samples were key to this.

Chang'e-5 would offer a further data point.

The Moon is once again in vogue. America is planning on returning astronauts to the surface in the middle of this decade. A series of robotic spacecraft will land ahead of these human explorers to do reconnaissance.

Some of these probes will be from national space agencies; some will be sent by commercial enterprises - including from the UK.

Tony Azzarelli, director and co-founder of the UK industry space body Access Space Alliance, said exciting times lay ahead, and highlighted the start-up Spacebit's quest to put a rover on the lunar surface next year.

"It'll be the first time that a legged robot will walk on another celestial world. Of course, all of these lunar missions are just a prelude to the return of humans to the Moon in the not-too-distant future," he told BBC News.

BBC

French customs officials say they have seized a "priceless" haul of over 27,000 archaeological artefacts after investigating a man’s claims he had stumbled across half of them in his back garden during a clean-up.

In reality, the hoarder had secretly amassed his illicit treasure – ranging from Bronze bracelets to Iron Age torques and Roman coins – in secret searches throughout eastern France.

He had gathered the precious artefacts himself using metal detectors and, apparently, expert archaeological knowledge.

The seizure of the 27,400 objects, came after a year-long joint French-Belgian investigation involving customs authorities and the French culture ministry.

The individual, a French national residing in Belgium who has not been named and now faces a criminal investigation, had acted out of personal interest and for trading purposes, according to the French customs service.

Belgian authorities’ suspicions were initially aroused in 2019 when he told authorities he had found 14,154 Roman coins by chance while cleaning up an orchard he had recently bought. Under Belgian law, owners who make such chance finds are entitled to at least part of them.

They sent an expert. “He opened the car boot and showed me two enormous plastic buckets filled to the brim. I had never seen so many coins,” Marleen Martens, archaeologist at the Flanders heritage agency in Belgium, told La Voix du Nord.

She said she instantly recognised some silver coins as from the era of Roman general Mark Antony, who was a key ally of Emperor Julius Caesar and played a pivotal role in the growth of the Roman Empire as it moved from republic to autocracy.

However, upon inspection of the ground, she concluded it was “impossible” that this was a Roman site given the “context”.

She alerted French customs, which later confirmed that the coins had actually been collected during "the looting of various sites in France” – mainly in the eastern Grand Est region.

The case has now been handed to the judiciary, with the man risking a large fine and even a prison term.

This seizure is "a clear message to those who – for the profit and the selfish pleasure of a few – deprive us of our shared heritage and erase entire sections of our history", said French finance minister Bruno Le Maire in a statement.

He described the haul as a "priceless treasure".

The collection includes thousands of rare Roman coins, many of them rich in silver.

Also among the looted objects are bracelets and torques dating from the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, a rare Roman dodecahedron of which there are only around 100 known examples in the world, Roman brooches, statues and other objects from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance./The Telegraph

LAS VEGAS (AP) — The driver of a box truck that struck and killed five bicyclists on a stretch of Nevada highway last week, and told investigators he fell asleep at the wheel, had a high level of methamphetamine in his system, prosecutors said Wednesday.

Jordan Alexander Barson, 45, of Kingman, Arizona, faces 12 felony charges, including driving under the influence and reckless driving, in a criminal complaint filed in Las Vegas.

“Choices have consequences,” Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson said after a Las Vegas judge issued a warrant for Barson’s arrest in the Dec. 10 crash on U.S. 95 between Boulder City and Searchlight, Nevada.

“We all make decisions every day,” Wolfson said. “This was a choice the defendant made to get behind the wheel while intoxicated.”

Barson was arrested Wednesday and booked into the Mohave County Jail in Kingman, sheriff's spokeswoman Anita Mortensen said. Wolfson said he will be extradited to Nevada, where the charges he faces could put him in state prison for decades.

Court and jail records do not show that Barson has an attorney.

Prosecutor Eric Bauman said Barson told investigators he was driving his regular work route between Las Vegas, the Colorado River town of Bullhead City, Arizona, and Kingman when he fell asleep.

Blood tests showed Barson had nine times an allowable amount of methamphetamine in his system, Bauman said.

The flat-faced truck plowed into at least seven bicyclists trailing a Subaru Outback support vehicle amid about 20 cyclists making an annual 130-mile ride from Las Vegas through scenic desert in Nevada and California, according to the Nevada Highway Patrol and riders in the group.

Two injured bicyclists were taken to University Medical Center in Las Vegas, and the driver of the Subaru, David Merrill, also was injured, the Highway Patrol said. A third bicyclist was treated for minor injuries at the scene about 60 miles (97 kilometers) south of Las Vegas.

Michael Anderson, a retired Las Vegas police officer who was in the group, told reporters they bicycled the so-called Nipton Loop for 15 years. U.S. 95 in the area is a flat, straight and divided highway with a vehicle speed limit of 75 mph (121 kph).

Killed were Las Vegas residents Erin Michelle Ray, 39, a real estate agent; Gerrard Suarez Nieva, 41, a medical care technician; Michael Todd Murray, 57, a former motorcycle racer; Aksoy Ahmet, 48, a stay-at-home father of three; and Thomas Chamberlin Trauger, 57, chief financial officer at the Sports Basement recreational gear chain in the Bay Area.

A huge sinkhole has opened up on a residential street, after rain drenched the NSW north coast.

In the last five days, more than 600mm of rain has been dumped in Coffs Harbour, causing the massive sink hole, which was shared to social media by ABC’s Jake Lapham.

Lapham said the sink hole appeared on Pearce Drive in Coffs Harbour, and a photo shows the area has already been taped off.

The Bureau of Meteorology has issued a severe weather warning for parts of the northern rivers and mid-north coast, with more heavy downpours and unusually high tides forecast.

The deluge has also prompted widespread flooding around the northern rivers, with evacuation orders remaining in place in Condong and Tumbulgum, north of Murwillumbah.

The order came after the Tweed River burst its banks near Tumbulgum on Tuesday, with minor to moderate flooding in the area.

Heavy rain severely damages road

The NSW SES Murwillumbah Unit shared a shocking photo of a damaged road to Facebook on Wednesday.

The photo was taken at 6.30am after the flood water at Dungay Road has receded, while parts of the road remain flooded, it appears the heavy rain has severely damaged the road.

“You never know what's under flood waters,” the post said.

On person in the comments said the photo showed why people should not drive through flooded waters.

“A disaster of a car overturning would result in deaths,” they said.

SES called to hundreds of jobs

The SES attended 85 jobs overnight and has performed 24 flood rescues since the extreme weather began on the weekend.

In total the SES has attended more than 1016 jobs.

"The majority of those jobs are fixing leaking roofs and damage due to heavy rainfall or trees down due to strong winds and we're also getting requests for sandbags," and SES spokeswoman said on Wednesday.

agencies

About 2.3 million children in Ethiopia's northern Tigray region are cut off from humanitarian assistance as violence continues, the UN has warned.

"Protecting these children, many of whom are refugees and internally displaced... must be a priority", said the UN's children's agency Unicef.

Despite deals with the Ethiopian government, humanitarian agencies say they are being denied access to Tigray.

Government forces have been battling Tigray fighters since 4 November.

The government says it is in control of the region and the conflict is over. But Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) says it is still fighting on various fronts.

Hundreds, even thousands, of people are thought to have been killed in the conflict, while about 50,000 have fled to neighbouring Sudan.

In a statement, Unicef said: "The longer access to [the children] is delayed, the worse their situation will become as supplies of food, including ready-to-use therapeutic food for the treatment of child malnutrition, medicines, water, fuel and other essentials run low."

It added: "We call for urgent, sustained, unconditional and impartial humanitarian access to all families in need wherever they are."

Neither the Ethiopian government nor the TPLF have commented on the issue.

What is the conflict about?

The conflict escalated in November, when Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed ordered a military offensive against regional forces in Tigray.

He said he did so in response to an attack on a military base housing government troops in Tigray.

media captionThe BBC’s Anne Soy reports from a refugee camp on the Sudan-Ethiopian border

The escalation came after months of feuding between Mr Abiy's government and leaders of the TPLF - the region's dominant political party.

For almost three decades, the party was at the centre of power, before it was sidelined after Mr Abiy took office in 2018 in the wake of anti-government protests.

BBC