MAIDUGURI, Nigeria A multinational task force battling Boko Haram said on Thursday it had recaptured the only town in northeast Nigeria’s Borno state that was still held by the Islamist militant group.
Advertisement
The Associated Press reported that a Unicef employee and a worker for the International Organisation for Migration were among the wounded.
Warning of humanitarian catastrophe in Nigeria and the Lake Chad region, the UN’s aid chief on Wednesday called for scaling up efforts to address Africa’s fastest growing refugee crisis.
The UN says 3 million people in the northeast are in urgent need of food aid, but that some roads within Nigeria are unsafe for convoys due to mines.
Before it’s here, it’s on the Bloomberg Terminal.
“This was not only an attack on humanitarian workers”, UNICEF said.
“For now, movement of United Nations personnel outside Maiduguri is suspended for three days while the incident is investigated, hampering delivery of aid”, UNICEF’s regional director, Manuel Fontaine, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
FILE – Internally displaced persons wait to be served with food at Dikwa camp, in northeast Nigeria’s Borno state, February 2, 2016.
The attack prompted a temporary suspension of United Nations humanitarian assistance missions in the area pending a reevaluation of the security situation, a UNICEF statement said.
Many inhabitants were traumatised and one in five children was suffering from acute malnutrition, it said.
This was not only an attack on humanitarian workers.
Damasak, a fishing and irrigation hub which lies close to the border with Niger, some 180 kilometres north of Borno state capital Maiduguri, was taken by Boko Haram in November 2014.
The Nigerian Army on Monday rescued the wife and daughter of Shehu of Bama from the Boko Haram enclave in Borno.
The agency said it found people without water, food or sanitation in areas formerly in control of the Boko Haram terrorists, warning that tens of thousands of them may die if not urgently treated.
The Multi-National Joint Taskforce (MNJTF) has finally reclaimed and occupied Damasak town on the border between Nigeria and Niger republic.
Advertisement
“The Nigerian government, which is receiving significant amounts of foreign aid, needs to understand that its main priority is to deal with Boko Haram, and also to make sure Nigeria does not suffer the worst humanitarian disaster in its history”.
