Aid cut in Nigeria after U.N. convoy hit

LAGOS, Nigeria — The United Nations is suspending aid to dangerous areas of Nigeria’s northeastern Borno state, where it says a half-million people are starving, after Boko Haram ambushed a humanitarian convoy.

Three civilians including a UNICEF employee and a contractor for the International Organization for Migration were wounded in Thursday’s ambush, along with two of the soldiers escorting the humanitarian workers, according to the Nigerian army and the U.N. Children’s Fund.

“Only the U.N. missions outside the capital have been suspended,” UNICEF spokesman Doune Porter said Friday. “The normal assistance we have been giving will continue in Maiduguri,” the Borno state capital of 1 million people that hosts another million refugees from Nigeria’s 7-year-old Islamic insurgency.

“This was not only an attack on humanitarian workers. It is an attack on the people who most need the assistance and aid that these workers were bringing,” Porter said.

The attacked convoy was traveling from the city of Bama, newly freed from Boko Haram, where Doctors Without Borders has warned that children are dying every day, with 15 percent suffering severe acute malnutrition and likely to die without food and medical aid.

More than 500,000 people are suffering a “catastrophic humanitarian crisis” in dangerous-to-reach areas, the group said.