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UN food agency reaches more people displaced by Boko Haram violence in Chad, Cameroon

Xinhua, February 17, 2016 Adjust font size:

The World Food Programme (WFP) and its partners have over the past week reached thousands of people recently displaced by the Boko Haram violence in Chad and Cameroon with life-saving food and nutrition support, a UN spokesman told reporters here Tuesday.

In Chad, more than 5,000 internally displaced people received food and nutrition assistance for the first time as insecurity and access concerns had cut them off from any support, Farhan Haq, the deputy UN spokesman, said at a daily news briefing here.

"Distributions are ongoing, and WFP aims this month to reach up to 35,000 displaced people, cut off previously from any assistance," he said.

WFP warns that more than 5.6 million people in areas affected by the Boko Haram violence in Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger face hunger.

More than 1,000 people have been killed since Nigerian Islamic sect Boko Haram launched attacks to Cameroon in 2013, Cameroonian Communication Minister Issa Tchiroma Bakary said in a statement on Jan. 15, adding that Boko Haram launched 315 attacks, 32 suicide bomb attacks and 12 mine attacks since 2013 in Far North Region of Cameroon.

More than 100,000 people are uprooted in Chad because of the violence by militant group Boko Haram in the Lake Chad region, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.

A regional offensive by Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon last year drove Boko Haram from much of the territory it held in northern Nigeria, undermining its six-year campaign to carve out an Islamist caliphate.

In response to growing food insecurity, malnutrition concerns and continued displacement in the Lake Chad Basin, WFP aims to scale up its assistance from 600,000 to nearly 750,000 people, including refugees, internally displaced people, returnees and host communities.

From killing and abducting more people to attacking military bases, from carrying out blasts in the Nigerian capital Abuja to spreading to neighboring Chad, Cameroon and Niger, the group has made strong statements it is unwavering in its goal of establishing an Islamic State.

Following its allegiance to the extremist group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in March 2015, Boko Haram's tactics have changed as the group has launched various social media channels to spread its propaganda for its campaign of violence, reports said. Endit