SAVED FROM BOKO HARAM, 200 REFUGEES DIE OF STARVATION

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

The refugees “speak of children dying of hunger and digging new graves every day,” according to a statement from the 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.

Though Bama is just 70 kilometres southeast of Maiduguri, ongoing clashes between the militants and troops make travel unsafe and farmers have not planted crops for 18 months.

The Islamic militants seized Bama in September 2014 and Nigerian troops recaptured it in March 2015. Nigeria’s military has greatly curtailed the seven- year- old insurgency that has killed some 20,000 people, but militants still attack villages, deploy suicide bombers and have staged attacks across Nigeria’s borders in Chad, Niger and Cameroon.