June 23, 2016.

MSF says “a catastrophic humanitarian emergency” is unfolding at a camp in Bama, where 24,000 people have taken refuge.

Nearly 200 refugees, who fled Boko Haram attacks, have died of
starvation and dehydration in the northeastern Nigerian city of Bama in
the past month, Doctors Without Borders said on Wednesday.

The refugees “speak of children dying of hunger and digging new
graves every day,” according to a statement from the global medical
charity group, also known by its French acronym MSF.


“A catastrophic humanitarian emergency” is unfolding at a makeshift
camp on a hospital compound where 24,000 people have taken refuge, it
said.

The doctors referred 16 emaciated children at risk of dying to their
special feeding centre in Maiduguri. One in five of the 15,000 children
are suffering severe acute malnutrition, the group found.


“We see the trauma on the faces of our patients who have witnessed
and survived many horrors,” said Ghada Hatim, head of the Doctors
Without Borders mission in Nigeria.

Her team reached Bama on Tuesday following a military convoy from
Maiduguri, the Borno state capital that is the headquarters of Nigeria’s
military campaign.


Though Bama is just 70km southeast of Maiduguri, ongoing clashes
between the rebels and government troops make travel unsafe and farmers
have not planted crops for 18 months, Dr Christopher Mampula of MSF
explained by telephone from Paris.

Boko Haram fighters routinely burn down homes and destroy wells,
leaving few water sources in an area where temperatures often soar above
40 degrees.


The armed group seized Bama in September 2014 and Nigerian troops recaptured it in March 2015.


Nigeria’s military has greatly curtailed the seven-year-old armed
rebellion that has killed some 20,000 people, but fighters still attack
villages and deploy suicide bombers.


Boko Haram has also staged attacks across Nigeria’s borders in Chad, Niger and Cameroon.

The refugees in Bama are among 1.8 million Nigerians forced from
their homes and living inside the country, with another 155,000 in
neighbouring countries, according to the UN.

SOURCE: AP