UN suspends aid to Borno over convoy attack

 

The United Nations has temporarily suspended aid deliveries in Borno State, after a humanitarian convoy was attacked, the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF said on Thursday.

According to Reuters, UNICEF said in a statement that unknown assailants attacked the convoy on Thursday as it returned to Maiduguri from delivering aid in Bama, injuring a UNICEF employee and an International Organisation for Migration contractor.

“The United Nations has temporarily suspended humanitarian assistance missions pending review of the security situation,” it said.

Nearly a quarter of a million children in Borno suffer from life-threatening malnourishment and around one in five will die if they do not receive treatment, UNICEF said earlier this month.

Medecins Sans Frontieres said on Wednesday that severely malnourished children were dying in large numbers in northeast Nigeria, where food supplies are close to running out.

By 2014, Boko Haram controlled territory around the size of Belgium in North-East until most of it was recaptured last year by the Nigerian army and troops from neighbouring countries.

More than 15,000 people have been killed and at least two  million displaced by Boko Haram’s insurgency in the country.