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Numbers of Nigerian people flee to shun kidnappings: UNHCR

10 May 2014 00:08 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. The recent wave of attacks on civilians with unprecedented brutality and frequency in northeast Nigeria was alarming, said the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on Friday, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

Adrian Edwards, spokesman with the UN refugee agency, told reporters that Nigeria sunk in the mire of multiple kidnappings and deaths over the past two months, leaving numbers of people internally displaced or even having fled to neighboring countries for safety.

Many internal displaced people and refugees have witnessed killings.

UNHCR then noted that the abduction of over 200 schoolgirls last month in Chibok in Borno was just one in a series of similar kidnappings from schools in northeast Nigeria in recent months.

The volatility in this African country led to some 250,000 people internally displaced and 61,000 others took refugees in neighboring Cameroon, Chad and Niger, said Edwards.

Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, is currently grappling with security challenges, including the insurgency of Boko Haram. Last Thursday, at least 20 people were killed in a blast in the capital Abuja, where the World Economic Forum on Africa was hosted this week.