By Valentine Amanze, Online Editor
The United Nations (UN) has confirmed that thousands of Nigerians have fled the country’s Borno State following heavy fighting between the nation’s Army and the Boko Haram terrorist group.
The latest rebel attack on Wednesday drove out as many as 80 percent of the population of Damasak, according to the U.N. refugee agency, which disclosed that up to 65,000 people were on the move.
UN Spokesman, Babar Baloch, said in Geneva, “Assailants looted and burned down private homes, warehouses of humanitarian agencies, a police station, a clinic, and also a UNHCR facility.”
It marked the third such attack in a week, he said.
There are “very worrying” reports of clashes between insurgent groups and Nigeria’s armed forces, spokesman Jens Laerke of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, told AP.
Armed groups have been attacking humanitarian facilities and at times conducting house-to-house searches, reportedly looking for civilian aid workers, he said.
Most humanitarian aid operations had been suspended in the area since Sunday because of the insecurity, Laerke said.
“The situation on the ground is extremely critical,” he said. “If this continues, it will be impossible — maybe for longer periods of time — for us to deliver aid to people who desperately need it.”
The incidents mark the latest violence in the Lake Chad basin area which in recent years has uprooted some 3.3 million people, the refugee agency said.