A new report by released by medical charity group, MSF on Thursday had revealed that almost 200 refugees fleeing Boko Haram militants have starved to death over the past month in Bama, Borno state, Northeast, Nigeria.
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“We see the trauma on the faces of our patients who have witnessed and survived many horrors”, said Ghada Hatim, head of MSF in Nigeria.
Bama is largely closed off.
A civilian vigilante and a soldier based in the remote town of Banki, 60 km from Bama near the Cameroon border, told AFP this month at least 10 people were “starving to death” every day. “We were told that on certain days more than 30 people have died due to hunger and illness”.
MSF said its team also counted 1,233 graves located near the IDP camp in Bama in the past year, and 480 of them were children’s graves.
A catastrophic humanitarian emergency is now unfolding in a camp for internally displaced people in Borno State, Nigeria, the worldwide medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said today.
Boko Haram’s fight against the Nigerian state has killed upwards of 20,000 people and forced 2.7 million more to flee across the region.
The town in Nigeria’s Borno state has always been a target of Boko Haram assaults.
Medicins Sans Frontieres reported Thursday that nearly 200 Nigerian refugees have died from starvation and malnutrition in the past month while in the Bama refugee camp.
He said that many inhabitants are traumatized and one in five children is suffering from acute malnutrition.
Nigeria’s military has greatly curtailed the 7-year-old uprising but the insurgents still attack remote villages, making farming unsafe.
It was the group’s first visit to the camp after the city was reclaimed from the hands of Boko Haram in March 2015. The United Nations Children’s Fund, or UNICEF, reported Thursday that since May the agency had partnered with the state Primary Health Care Development Agency to provide a permanent primary healthcare presence in Bama.
MSF has been present in Borno State, Maiduguri, since May 2014.
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According to Colonel Ssani Kukasheka Usman, the army spokesperson, the troops of 81 Battalion carried out the operation in Borno state. But the jihadist group, which a year ago pledged loyalty to Islamic State, still regularly stages suicide bombings.
