Boko Haram ambushes humanitarian convoy, wounds 5

The military warned earlier this month that Boko Haram fighters were fleeing its daily aerial bombardments and ground attacks in the forest, heading toward the border with Cameroon.

Children in the town were vaccinated against measles, a disease that can be deadly for children under five. In the last six months, there has probably been one person out of 12 which has died in Banki.

The charity group, also known as the MSF by its French acronym, on Wednesday urged the United Nations to set up emergency food transports to the area, where up to 800,000 civilians have been cut off for over a year due to the ongoing violence by the Boko Haram Takfiri militants.

The medical charity Doctors Without Borders also raised alarms, saying its teams had recently found extremely high levels of malnutrition in Nigeria’s northeastern Borno state.

File photo shows a doctor attending to a malnourished child at a refugee camp in Yola, Nigeria, May 3, 2015.

MSF calls on worldwide organizations to mobilize to provide emergency food and medical aid to the people of Borno state.

“In Banki, as in a number of other areas, people have nearly no access to humanitarian aid”, says MSF’s emergency programme manager Hugues Robert, who has just returned from this town near the Cameroonian border. In Banki, MSF will also continue to provide clean water and improve sanitation.

“We’re gradually discovering the extent of this crisis and we are particularly concerned for people in the remote areas that we have not been able to access”, Robert said. “In conditions as precarious and risky as these, it is essential that people are allowed to seek refuge in safer areas, either in Nigeria or in neighbouring countries, and that those who are seriously ill are referred to hospitals in the region”.

United Nations political chief Jeffrey Feltman said that despite regional efforts to weaken Boko Haram, the group continues to threaten regional stability.

MSF Southern Africa has launched a NIGERIA EMERGENCY appeal to raise funds in support of expanding our medical emergency relief work in Borno State. With more than 2.7 million people uprooted from their homes, the Lake Chad basin is now home to one of the African continent’s biggest humanitarian crises.

“From January to June 2016, more than 50 children have been coerced to carry out suicide bombings across the four countries [Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon]”, he revealed.