More than 5.6 mln people affected by hunger, malnutrition in African areas due to Boko Haram violence: WFP

More than 5.6 million people do not have enough to eat in areas of Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger affected by the Boko Haram crisis, a UN spokesman told reporters here Monday.

At a daily news briefing, Farhan Haq, the deputy UN spokesman, quoted the World Food Programme (WFP) as saying that it aims to scale up its assistance from 600,000 people last year to nearly 750,000, including refugees, internally displaced people, returnees and host communities to cope with the growing food insecurity, malnutrition concerns and continued displacement in the Lake Chad Basin.

WFP said it needs urgent support to be able to do so.

In mid-February, 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.

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,

More than 1,000 people have been killed since Nigerian Islamic sect Boko Haram launched attacks on 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. Enditem