A BBC reporter writes about a relative forced to flee Ethiopia’s Tigray region following the outbreak of conflict between federal and regional troops.

A businessman and farm-owner, my uncle has become a refugee in Sudan, along with tens of thousands of others. He does not even have a pair of shoes, having lost them as he fled Tigray by foot and boat.

He was not expecting a conflict to break out. So, in the beginning of November, he undertook a half-day-long journey from his home near Adwa city in central Tigray to the agricultural hub of Humera in the west, leaving his wife and two children behind.