An official with the World Health Organization (WHO) said the province of Tigray in Ethiopia is the worst ongoing humanitarian crisis in the world.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus made the remarks on Wednesday, saying that more than 6 million people in Tigray have endured attacks for nearly two years at the hands of Ethiopian and Eritrean forces.

“The humanitarian crisis in Tigray is more than Ukraine without any exaggeration. And, I said this many months ago, maybe the reason is the color of the skin of the people in Tigray.”

Ghebreyesus, who is a native of Tigray, said the province has been forced into isolation from the rest of the world without electricity, banks, and limited fuel.

He added that limited food and medicine have been delivered to to Tigray since the Ethiopian government and Tigray rebels came to a truce in March. People there are facing outbreaks of malaria, anthrax and cholera.

“Nowhere in the world would you see this level of cruelty, where a government punishes 6 million of its people for more than 21 months by denying them basic services,” he said.

Ghebreyesus was a Tigray regional health official in the early 2000s. He also served in the Ethiopian government for 10 years as minister of health before becoming minister of foreign affairs.

He said peace talks have yielded no progress in  Tigray because dominant developed nations are not using their influence. He added that most attention has been given to the conflict in Ukraine, not Ethiopia.

More about Ghebreyesus’ remarks about the conflict in Ethiopia can be found here.