Abuja – Gunmen ransacked two hospitals in separate attacks in northwest and central Nigeria, a local official and an aid agency said on Tuesday.
Heavily-armed criminals known by locals as bandits have wreaked havoc in the region for years, despite attempted peace deals and troop deployments.
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said gunmen attacked a health facility in Birnin Magaji ward in the Gummi district of Zamfara state on Monday, kidnapping one person.
“The armed group violently broke into the health centre and kidnapped an elderly… medical staff (member),” MSF said in a statement on Twitter on Tuesday.
Gunmen then “destroyed the medicines and therapeutic food”, it added.
Nigerian gunmen attack two hospitals in volatile region https://t.co/px0YIjV6kY
— Citizen TV Kenya (@citizentvkenya) October 19, 2022
The aid agency helps run part of the facility that supports malnourished children.
In a separate attack on Tuesday in neighbouring Niger state, gunmen targeted a hospital in Gulu, in the Lapai district which borders the capital Abuja.
The security commissioner for Niger state Emmanuel Umaru confirmed the attack on the Abdussalam Abubakar General Hospital to AFP but said he was yet to receive a detailed report.
A resident said two people were killed and 20 others kidnapped, including doctors.
“The gunmen stormed the hospital around 01:30 am (0030 GMT), shooting indiscriminately. They killed two people,” Adam Egiworo told AFP.
“Around 20 people were kidnapped in all. They include the chief medical director of the hospital and medical staff on night shift as well as relatives of patients,” Egiworo said.
“We believe the gunmen took away the medical staff to go and treat their wounded comrades in their camps,” Egiworo said.
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A humanitarian crisis is looming in the region as violence spirals, and MSF warned last month that malnutrition had reached “catastrophic levels”.
“In Zamfara state, one of the areas most affected by ongoing violence and banditry, we recorded a 64 percent increase in the numbers of severely malnourished children treated… from January to August 2022 when compared to January to August 2021,” it said in a statement.
Though few international aid agencies operate in Nigeria’s northwest or central states due in part to financing restrictions, the UN last year registered nearly one million people as displaced.
In January, the government declared bandits as “terrorists” in an effort to scale up the military response.
Insecurity is one of the major challenges facing Africa’s most populous nation as it heads to the polls in February next year to elect a successor to President Muhammadu Buhari.
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Source: AFP
Picture: Twitter/@NwekeCharles18
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