The United Nations says it is suspending aid to unsafe areas of Nigeria’s northeastern Borno state after Boko Haram ambushed a humanitarian convoy.
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It would be recalled that, unicef temporarily suspended travel to the troubled region, however, the humanitarian organization plans to scale-up its response in Borno State substantially.
At today’s regular briefing in Geneva, UNICEF spokesperson Christophe Boulierac noted the importance of conducting missions in the area, saying: “Earlier in July, UNICEF had shared with the press some very alarming information, according to which, 244,000 children were suffering from severe acute malnutrition in Borno state in 2016”.
“I met the United Nations officials and they told me that the attack would not deter them from doing their humanitarian work”. “It is an attack on the people who most need the assistance and aid that these workers were bringing”, Porter said.
The agency has provided two million people with health services and treated 56,000 children for malnutrition in the three conflict-affected states of northeast Nigeria.
The convoy, which was en route Maiduguri from Bama, included staff from UNICEF, UNFPA, and IOM.
“Troops returning from Bama on humanitarian escort duty, were ambushed en route (to) Maiduguri by suspected remnants of Boko Haram terrorists hiding in Meleri village, a few kilometres from Kawuri”, it said.
The majority of people who are situated in the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) Camp and many other territories which used to be controlled by Boko Haram forces now suffer from lack of water, food and appropriate sanitation. “We absolutely have to reach more of these communities”, she added.
The Nigerian army has reportedly defused a bomb planted near the house of a former governor of Borno.
The people of northeast Nigeria are about as tough as they come.
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At least 2.7 million people have been forced from their homes by the violent campaign by Boko Haram since 2009 to impose its version of Islamic law in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country of about 180 million.
