Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has suspended medical activities in Nigeria’s town of Rann following the deadly attack on Thursday, the staff has been evacuated.
On Thursday, Boko Haram militants mounted an attack on a military base in Rann, located in Nigeria’s northeastern Borno.
According to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), the attack claimed the lives of four mobile police officers and three humanitarian workers.
“Following a violent attack in Rann, Borno state, on Thursday, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) suspended its medical activities in the town and evacuated 22 national and international staff,” MSF said in a statement.
The statement noted that it was still unclear how many people had been killed and injured in the attack, adding that before leaving the MSF staff had provided medical assistance to nine wounded patients.
The press service pointed out that 40,000 people residing in Rann had been largely relying on the organisation’s services.
“Leaving our patients, which include 60 children currently enrolled in our nutrition programme, without medical assistance, is an extremely painful decision.
“We will continue to evaluate how the situation evolves and we will return as soon as the conditions allow,” MSF Emergency Coordinator in Nigeria Kerri Ann Kelly said, as quoted in the statement.
The official pointed out that the latest attack was a “stark reminder” that the people in Borno state are “trapped in a deadly cycle of violence and are heavily reliant on external assistance to survive.”
The MSF staff have been providing medical assistance to the people of Rann, near which a camp hosting around 55,000 displaced individuals has been located, since January 2017.
Nigeria has been facing the insurgency of the Boko Haram jihadists, who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) terror group.
The group has staged a number of violent attacks, including the 2011 bombing of a UN office in the country’s capital of Abuja which killed 21 people, and the abduction of almost 300 girls at a school in the town of Chibok, located in Borno, in 2014.