A child sleeps on a sack of food aid in the Tigray region. [Source: BBC]

UN humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock has said there is famine in northern Ethiopia after the release of a UN-backed analysis of the situation.

The analysis found that 350,000 people were living in “severe crisis” in the war-torn Tigray region, as well as neighbouring Amhara and Afar.

Tigray has been devastated by fighting between government forces and rebels, with 1.7 million people displaced.

According to the analysis, the food situation in the region has reached the level of a “catastrophe”, which it defines as starvation and death affecting small groups of people spread over large areas.