The top Democrat on the US Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee urged Secretary of State Marco Rubio not to end food assistance for millions of Ethiopians, warning of a potential “humanitarian catastrophe” amid renewed tensions in the northern Tigray region.

In a letter sent to Rubio on Wednesday, Senator Jeanne Shaheen warned that US funding cuts and the restructuring of food assistance programs would leave up to 3.1 million people without aid in a region that was rocked by war from 2020 to 2022. Shaheen said that the timing was potentially dire as “the break in food assistance will coincide with the lean and rainy seasons.”

The Famine Early Warning Systems Network, a State Department-funded monitoring program, projected in January that Ethiopia’s food assistance needs would nearly double — from around 9 million people to 16 million — as the lean, or pre-harvest, season peaks in July, with emergency conditions expected in several regions.