At least 120 people were wounded and 52 killed today in a bombing by the Nigerian Army on a camp for internally displaced people in Rann.
"This large-scale attack on vulnerable people who have already fled extreme violence is shocking and unacceptable," says Dr Jean-Clément Cabrol, MSF Director of Operations. "The safety of civilians must be respected. We are urgently calling on all parties to ensure the facilitation of medical evacuations by air or road for survivors who are in need of emergency care."
MSF medical teams are currently providing first aid to wounded patients in our facility in Rann. Other MSF medical and surgical teams in the region are also preparing to treat evacuated patients. At the time of the attack, MSF teams were vaccinating children against measles and screening them for malnutrition as well as providing general health consultations.
An estimated 50 people were killed and 120 wounded in the attack. Information is still unclear and we are doing our best to gather as much information as possible. No MSF staff members were wounded or killed but we have unfortunately received the sad information that three employees of a Cameroonian firm which was hired by MSF to provide water and sanitation services in the camp lost their lives during the attack. Our deepest sympathy goes out to their families and we are doing all we can to support them at this difficult time. We have worked closely with them in the past in Nigeria and they were well-known to many of our teams. We are at a loss to understand this tragedy.
MSF first started working in Nigeria in 1996, and is one of the few organisations still able to operate in hard-to-reach areas of the country.