GENEVA – The aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres says it is pulling out of Ethiopia’s Fik region because of persistent government harassment.

MSF representative Hugues Robert says staff members have been denied work permits and detained without reason.

Robert says Thursday’s decision means that the group’s efforts to provide medical care to ethnic Somali inhabitants in the Fik region are on hold indefinitely. The group also is known as Doctors Without Borders.

Ethnic Somalis have been fighting for greater autonomy or independence since Ethiopia seized the eastern region of Ogaden in a war with Somalia 30 years ago.

[AP / Expatica]